


If Tommy Stays

by Doctorpants



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, If I Stay - Gayle Forman, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Car Accidents, Coma, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Ghost Sleepy Bois Inc, Ghost TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Out of Body Experiences, Protective Wilbur Soot, Sad Toby Smith | Tubbo, Sad Wilbur Soot, Sleepy Bois Inc Angst, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Suicide Attempt, Toby Smith | Tubbo is Not Okay, TommyInnit Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot Angst, beta read by grammarly, kind of?, mental hospital mentioned in "flashback", only a reference though, that's in the past and it's referenced, the major character death is only "temporary" I guess so dw too much about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 25,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29094630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doctorpants/pseuds/Doctorpants
Summary: One second can change your whole life.One second and your best friends have to hold their breath wondering if they're going to be grieving come morning.One second and you'll see yourself through a third-person view as everything around you crumblesOne second and you'll wake up an orphan.That is--if you'll wake up.(AKA this fic is directly based on If I Stay by Gayle Forman but I take a lot of liberties such as absolutely obliterating the romance and crushing it to dust. This is all platonic angst your honor, but it's angst nonetheless.)
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Platonic only!, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 405
Kudos: 1185





	1. 10:15 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy's snow day doesn't go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW// 
> 
> mentions of car wreckage and mentions of broken bones

Tommy woke up that morning to a thin blanket of white covering the tree outside his window and the grass behind it. It isn’t an obscene amount of snow by any means, but it’s apparently enough for Tommy’s college to cancel classes for the day.

Motherinnit has let Tom sleep in a little later than usual, which he’s silently thankful for. Tubbo, whose classes were not in fact canceled, had sent him messages asking to hang out on the stream and play some games when he got home. Tommy sent a happy reply that he had nothing better to be doing. 

Tommy’s parents tell him that they’re going to visit his grandmother for a few hours. Tommy groans in protest, but he eventually gives in. 

Tommy’s grandmother lived almost an hour away, so they didn’t visit as much as Tommy’s mum would like. Nanainnit lived alone with her cats and only called Tommy “Thomas” and smelled of tea and peppermint at everyhour. It wasn’t that Tommy didn’t like Nana, he loved her in fact, it was just that there were 100 things he wanted to do and spending an hour in a car was not one of them. 

Tubbo tells Tommy that he’s going to call for the game at 3:00, and that Tommy better not be late. Tommy promises he won’t be. Two days ago Tommy missed the beginning of Tubbo’s stream because he was in the bathroom, and Tubbo was annoyed.

Tommy doesn’t like sitting in the backseat because he had no control over the music. 

Tommy begs his father to change the radio station to anything but classical music. Beethoven and Mozart were what Tommy had grown up on, and his parents didn’t appreciate that the teen had a distaste for orchestral masterpieces. Tommy would much rather listen to even the worst Britpop before he’d willingly tune in to more Vivaldi. 

When he realizes the fight is futile, he scrambles for the spare headphones he keeps under the seat so he can listen to something he finds tolerable. He resolves that, in a meager attempt to pass the time, he is going to text Wilbur about nothing in particular. 

He’d been friends with Wil for over a year, and he was so glad to have someone like him who never judged but always cared. Wilbur taught Tommy the gift of music that wasn’t all violins and pianos but electric guitars and drums. Wilbur made the most wonderful music. He often joked around a lot with songs about e-girls, but his serious pieces could move an audience to tears with a pluck of guitar strings. Tommy never understood that music could make you feel that kind of way before Wilbur. 

Tommy once asked if Wil would ever write a song about Tommy. 

“I don’t write serious music unless it’s about something that made me sad, Tommy,” Wilbur sighed as he puts down the guitar, “And quite frankly, you’ve never made me sad.” 

When Tommy pouted, Wilbur laughed. “That’s a good thing kid. Take the compliment.” 

“Mum, are you sure we can’t listen to anything else? My pal Wilbur has a new song, I can turn it on so you can hear it!”

Tommy goes to grab the aux cord from his mum and his mum turns around to give him the glare that would make any child regret everything they’ve ever done. 

“Put your seatbelt back on, Tom. We can listen as soon as this movement gets over, alright?”

His mum only turned around to scold Tommy for one second, but with roads as icy as this that was all it took. 

There’s the screech of breaks and the clang of the metal car colliding with the metal barrier against the motorway as the black sedan gets vaulted through the air. Would it not be absolutely terrifying, Tommy would have thought it was cool to spin upside-down in his car. 

There’s the sound of screaming. There’s the sound of bending and breaking as the vehicle makes an impact on the cold earth. There’s bones cracking and pieces slamming. 

And then-----nothing.

The surrounding world returns to the way it was. Except, that is, for the music that still plays unharmed from Tommy’s car radio. 

The snow falls gently to the ground and Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no.3 dances across the winter landscape. 

And just like that, everything had changed. 


	2. 10:38 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wilbur tries to call Tommy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW//
> 
> mentions of blood and car wrecks towards the end

Wilbur tried to do anything but worry, but as someone with anxiety, sometimes that’s all he could think to do. 

Tommy had been typing for almost ten minutes now. Surely a response to “How’d you like the new demo?” couldn’t warrant something that long, could it? Tommy practically lived on his phone or his computer. It was unlike to randomly go AFK without warning “brb,” which led Wilbur to two theories. 

Theory one: Tommy was genuinely typing an entire essay about the forty-second clip of a part of a second Wilbur had been working on. It would be insane of him, but Wilbur supposed it would be sweet and cute and not to mention completely out of character. If Tommy  _ were  _ to enjoy something that much, surely he’d just cap locks and key smash for a few consecutive messages. That was a nice thought, but he didn’t think it was the case. 

That lead Wilbur to panic while pondering the second option: something had made Tommy leave his phone on while still in the typing bar. Wilbur couldn’t even fathom what would prompt that, but surely Tommy had been pulled away from the conversation by  _ something, _ right? 

Perhaps Wilbur’s anxiety was just getting the best of him. After all, what genuinely could have been the worst that could happen?

He tried to call Tommy on discord, but nothing happened. He tried using Tommy’s real phone number, but it rang out to voicemail.

Wil wasn’t sure why, but he found himself messaging Tubbo. He just wants to know if Tubbo had heard anything from Tommy. 

_ T: will I’m literally in classes right now can this wait? _

_ W: I just want to know if you’ve heard anything from Tommy in the past couple of minutes. He’s not responding to my calls.  _

_ T: calm down he’s going to his grandma’s right? maybe he just hit a spot without a good internet connection. _

Wilbur was glad he talked to Tubbo. That was a very possible explanation, and it seemed to soothe Wilbur’s nerves tremendously. 

_ T: now leave me alone i seriously am not about to fail maths because of you.  _

__ Wilbur settled back into his bed. Tommy would text back as soon as he regained access to the internet, Wil was sure of it. 

Wilbur decided just to ring up Tommy just once more. Call it good measure, if you will. 

The call rings for ages before Wilbur’s greeted with a cheerful inbox message. 

It’s literally just Tommy saying “bitch” and then laughing hysterically until the beep. 

Meanwhile, a good few hundred miles away, a cracked cellphone vibrates in a pained effort to not shut down from the terrible cold. 

It’s being clutched tightly by a bloodied fist as it vibrates in the palm. The chipper ringtone of Wii music is immediately juxtaposed by the grim wreckage surrounding it. 

Ambulance sirens wail in the distance, surely approaching the scene any moment now. 

When Wilbur finished his voicemail, a quick “call me when you get this,” he gets up to make himself a light breakfast. 

“Everything’s fine,” Wilbur assures himself. 

Everything, in fact, was not fine. Dear reader, everything was far from it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, all of these chapters are quite short, but hopefully, that means I can update more frequently! 
> 
> Who do we want to see make an appearance in this fic as I go along? Right now I've only planned Wilbur and Tubbo, but I want to include some more people into the angst and chaos! Leave suggestions for stuff below, I guess! :D


	3. 10:47 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy finds himself in a strange situation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW//
> 
> lots of mentions of gore in this chap. If you can't deal with descriptions of corpses in any way, I'll leave a quick summary in the endnotes.

Tommy groans and instinctively pulls his arm up against his face in a weak effort to shield himself from the blinding morning sun overhead. 

For a moment, he feels like everything was just a dream until this point, but once he gets his bearings, he realizes that was not the case. 

The car is propped up against a tree. It’s ¾ of the way upside down, and it looks more like a metal husk than anything. Pieces of engine and doorframe are strewn about the landscape like breadcrumbs. It looks like a movie scene. 

Tommy runs over the inspect the car. He recognizes the license plate, which despite everything, has remained legible. His fears are realized: this is his family car. This is the car he was learning to drive in. And now it’s in a ditch off the side of the motorway in dozens of small pieces. 

Surely that would be the worst sight, but it’s not. Tommy sees his dad hanging from the passenger side window. He’s still buckled into his seat, but he doesn’t look very well despite that.

He’s not bleeding, which Tommy takes as a good sign. Instead, however, his lips are blotted a deep blue, practically purple, and the white bit of his eye is an unnatural red. It’s like he’s a ghoul or monster in some sort of low-budget horror movie Tubbo and he would watch on call together purely to laugh at. 

It’s genuinely unreal. 

Something about that sight makes Tommy’s stomach churn incessantly, but he quickly realizes that his mum is not in the car beside dad. She must have woken up away from the wreck as Tommy had. 

He is suddenly filled with the adrenaline rush needed to search the scene for his mum so he could feel some pang of safety. 

There’s nothing, and there’s nonbody except for gentle snowflakes and then---

He sees a hand. 

It’s sticking out limply from underneath some rubble. It’s red and scraped, but it’s holding something gingerly. 

“Mum!”

Tommy shouts. He hopes she can hear him. 

He runs up and tries to shake the arm to feel something like a pulse. He’s not sure what he’s looking for until the object clenched in the fist starts vibrating. 

The Wii Shop music echoes through the leaves and the snow piling around, and Tommy’s heart freezes. 

Surely not. 

He follows the hand and ends up finding a foot sticking out of the rubble, too. It’s placed in an angle that surely can’t be comfortable, but Tommy recognizes it as his own tennis shoe he’d lazily tied on not even an hour ago. 

Surely he wasn’t staring at himself, was he? 

He spins away and falls into the snow. Surely he must have just fallen asleep listening to that boring music in the car, and this was all some sort of dream. 

He pinches his wrist, the one that isn’t smothered in blood and gore, that is, and pleads with himself to wake up. 

He blinks, but the scene remains unchanged. He can’t even seem to feel himself as he pinches as hard as he can. 

Tommy’s had nightmares before. Accidentally streaming, and thousands of people watch him do something embarrassing nightmares, falling forever nightmares, being chased by a giant crab nightmares. Still, he’s always able to snap his eyes open and lift himself from the pillow. 

He tries again. 

_Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, Wake up!_

He doesn’t wake up. 

Then he hears that music. The cello slowly dances through the February air. He never thought he could love classical music so much, but finally, it’s something familiar. 

Tommy positions himself so he can really concentrate on Beethoven’s melodies as he pretends nothing else matters. He sits there as the song fades out, and he’s left once more with the deafening silence. 

His phone rings once more, and Tommy wishes he could become corporeal once more to answer it, but whatever hellscape this is will not allow that. 

It’s at this moment the sirens start to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tommy wakes up in a ditch, and he sees the wreck of his family car not far from him. Upon inspecting it, it's not a pleasant sight. He finds his dad not looking very healthy, but he can't find his mum. 
> 
> He ends up finding himself in the rubble, which sends him spiraling. He begs to wake up, but nothing happens. The sirens call out in the distance as Tommy tries to focus on the only familiar thing: Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3. 
> 
> /// Last update for today, I just wanted to get this out as a teaser. For Tommy POV Chapters, which will be pretty much every-other chapter, I'll be using a lot fo direct quotes from If I Stay the novel. So if it seems familiar, that's what's happening.


	4. 3:06 AM PST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technoblade has insomnia

Quite Frankly, Technoblade’s sleep schedule was not good. Being up at three in the morning was not ideal for anyone. He didn’t even have a reason to be awake. Tubbo had messaged him a few hours ago asking if he would be down for playing jackbox or something when Tubbo got home from school. That would be 3 or 4 for his British friends, but that would be an awful 7 or 8 in the morning for him. Being eight hours behind British time was not fun, and perhaps that’s why his sleeping schedule was so goddamn fucked. 

When Techno finally realized he wasn’t getting those blissful hours of sleep, he prepared himself for a late-night/early-morning shower. It was the easiest way to get himself ready for what he assumed would be a chill day of hanging out with some of his favorite people. 

It wasn’t always that all of the sleepy bois could hang out, so Techno jumped at the invitation Tubbo extended about playing jackbox, whether on or off-stream. Never in a million years did he think he’d voluntarily spend his time conversing with children, nevermind genuinely enjoying it. 

Yet still, Tubbo and Tommy were some of his favorite people unironically, and he enjoyed every minute he could spend with them. 

When Technoblade got out of his shower, he sent a lazy text to Phil. 

_ T: What are you doing rn? I’m bored. _

Phil was not slow to reply

_ P: Isn’t it 2:30 in the morning over there? What on earth are you doing awake? _

_ T: It’s actually almost 3:30, and I can’t sleep.  _

Before he has time to react, Phil is calling him. 

“What’s on your mind, mate?” The older man greets. 

“I don’t know, dude. My circadian rhythm just hates me.”

Phil hums into the receiver. “You want to try going to sleep or have you given up?”

Techno exhales deeply, “I don’t know. I think I’ll stay up for a little while, Tubbo said we’re doing some gaming later on and I kind of want to do that.” 

“Alright, mate.” Phil agrees.

Phil speaks again, “Just don’t get too into your own head, okay?”

Techo sighs. Phil may know him too well. 

“3 AM is the witching hour, I don’t want any intrusive thoughts going into that brain of yours,” Phil warns. It’s spoken lightheartedly, but there’s some genuine concern sprinkled on top. 

“I might just get something to snack on and read.” Techno decides. 

“Sounds like a good plan. You call me if you need anything, will you?” 

Techno agrees to the brit on the other line before ending the call. 

Deep inside his subconscious mind, though, he has a feeling he can’t shake. It gnaws at his brain slowly but surely, but Techno quickly dismisses it as thoughts that can only be had after mild sleep-deprivation.

Something isn’t quite right, his subconscious warns him. 

Technoblade only chooses to ignore the feeling and opt for some butter and toast. 


	5. 11:24 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy's injuries are assessed, and it's not looking particularly good for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, major TW//
> 
> Lots of descriptions of /strong/injuries/ (this is taken verbatim for the book on this chapter) so beware it's kinda gross! 
> 
> Also, there are lots of mentions of death!

_ Am I dead? _

Tommy never thought he’d genuinely ask himself this question. 

At first, it seemed pretty obvious that he was. The standing-and-watching part was only a temporary intermission before the bright light and the life-flashing-before-him business that would transport him to wherever he was going next. 

Except that now there are paramedics, police officers, and the local fire department. A fireman zips his dad into a plastic bag and Tommy winces and turns away. Tommy distantly hears the man talk to another firefighter, a girl who can’t be more than twenty. 

The older man explains to the rookie that Dad was probably hit first and killed on impact, which explains the lack of blood. “Immediate cardiac arrest,” he says. “When your heart can’t pump blood, you don’t really bleed. You seep.”

Tommy cringes difficultly at those words. He can’t wrap himself around that.  _ Seeping _ was such a terrible word. 

Instead, Tommy focuses on how fitting it is that Dad was the one to buffer him and his mum from the blow. He was always protecting them like any dad would fiercely do. It wasn’t his choice, obviously, but in some macabre or morbid way, Tommy found it fitting. 

What Tommy couldn’t figure out if the body of himself now being hoisted from the rubble was dead. The corporeal Tommy was laid at the side of the road, leg hanging down unnaturally into the ditch. 

His prone form is surrounded by a team of people performing frantic tasks and plugging veins with something Tommy doesn’t recognize. He grimaces at the fact they’ve taken off his pants to treat the leg that is moments from breaking off completely. The form Tommy can only assume is his ghost watches paralyzed as they rip off his shirt and expose all sorts of broken flesh. There’s a beautiful girl working on him, and he feels embarrassed that she’s seeing him like this. Someone’s cut off his pant leg to expose the terrible leg and his underwear is exposed now. It’s an embarrassing sight for any teenager, so he quickly turns away to focus on something -anything- else. 

The police have lit flares along the perimeter of the scene and are instructing cars in both directions to turn back. The road is temporarily closed while they deal with the accident. The police politely offer alternate routes, back roads that will take people where they need to be. 

They must have places to go, the people in these cars, but a lot of them don’t turn back. They climb out of their cars, hugging themselves against the cold. They appraise the scene. And then they look away, some of them crying, one woman throwing up into the ferns on the side of the road. And even though they don’t know who we are or what has happened, they pray for us. In a weird way, Tommy can  _ feel _ them praying.

That also seems to be evidence to Tommy that he is, in fact, dead. 

That and, of course, the leg that the 60mph asphalt exfoliate has pared to the bone. He should be in absolute agony. He’s not, though. He’s not crying, either, even though for all intents and purposes he knows that something unthinkable has just happened to his family. They are all like Humpty Dumpty and all of these king’s horses and all of these’s kingsmen cannot put us back together again.

Tommy ponders these questions when the medic with the ginger-red hair and freckles who has been tireless working on the corporeal body seems to answer Tommy’s main question. 

“His Glasgow Coma is a seven. Let’s bag him now!” she screams. 

Someone snakes a tube down Tommy’s throat, or the Tommy that apparently has some sort of coma, and Tommy is surprised he doesn’t feel the need to gag. The ghost-Tommy watches helplessly as the team attaches a bag with a bulb to it and starts rhythmically pumping.

“What’s the ETA for Life Flight?” the red-haired girl asks. 

“Ten minutes,” another medic responds. “It takes twenty minutes to get back to town.”

“We’re going to get him there in fifteen if you have to speed like a fucking demon.”

Tommy can tell what the guy is thinking of saying to the fierce freckled girl: another car crash wouldn’t do him any good. 

Tommy agrees silently. 

The medic doesn’t say anything back in protest. He just clenches his jaw. They hoist Tommy’s limp body into the back of an ambulance; the redhead climbs into the back to sit next to Tommy’s head. Tommy’s ghost can’t help but follow suit and sit beside her as the ambulance revs its engine and pulls away. 

The sirens are loud from the inside, but the redhead isn’t distracted by them. She pumps the bag with one hand, adjusts the IV and the machines, and monitors with the other. Then, she smoothes a lock of blond hair on Tommy’s forehead. 

“You hang in there, kid.”


	6. 11:40 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil reads his horoscope.

Phil spent his morning as usual. He made himself a coffee. (perhaps he was a bad brit for preferring coffee over tea, but he only shrugged it off.) He kissed Kristin good morning. 

He talked his friend Technoblade down from a 3 AM spiral. 

And now he sat comfortably in his desk chair playing Minecraft for a later YouTube video. 

He checked his phone for the first time in a while and saw Tommy had messaged some stupid meme of a monkey a few hours ago in a group chat.

Sometimes being friends with kids was exhausting. 

He gave the image a quick laugh emoji reaction and responded, “very funny” in all lowercase. There were no responses back from anyone. Usually, Tubbo, Tommy, or someone was quick to reply. The kids were always near a computer these days, weren’t they.

Unlike Techno or Wilbur, Phil was not a worrier, and he was able to shrug it off as being one of the random moments nobody was on. 

Kristin was still one of the people that followed daily horoscopes. She only half-believed them, but Phil thought they were fun insights even if anyone could derive any meaning from such vague statements. 

“Pisces today says, ‘hold close to the ones you love,” Kristin informs him. Phil gives her a deep hug and tells her she’s the one he loves. 

Marriage does weird things to you. You get soft and wholesome. Sometimes it’s easy to forget about life when there’s someone always there for you and with you. It’s hard to remember that terrible lonely feeling. 

For instance, the lonely feeling of a certain half-dead apparition aimlessly trying to figure out what exactly had happened in the past hour. 

The certain lonely feeling that he was the only one who could hear or see himself. That surely  _ this _ was how the great Tommyinnit died. 

Phil couldn’t remember that feeling all too well because loneliness was something he hadn’t truly felt in quite a while. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy people are liking this. This was literally just a project to give me an excuse to combine my favorite thing in middle school (the source material If I Stay) with my favorite thing in high school (MCYT) and I genuinely wasn't expecting people to find this interesting! I'm so glad some people are really liking this! 
> 
> I have a lot of the Tommy chapters already written because they're mostly using the source text and making it ~tommy~ or whatever, so I'm working in smaller filler POVs until we get to the fateful moment where all hell breaks loose and the two POV plots combine: the friends find out that Tommy is not okay. We've got a bit to go before that, dw. But if you've read the book and are interested: Tommy's mum will follow Teddy's storyline, Wilbur will get up to some of Adam's antics, and the end will remain unchanged. 
> 
> :')
> 
> If you don't know what that means, no spoilers ;)


	7. 11:51 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy rides in a helicopter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah! Another Tommy update for you all! I just went in and added chapter summaries for you all, too. :D

When the ambulance gets to the nearest hospital- not the one in Tommy’s home village but a small local place that looks more like an old-age home than a medical center- the medics rush the unconscious Tommy inside.

“I think we’ve got a collapsed lung. Get a chest tube in him and move him out! The gorgeous red-haired medic screams as she passes the Tommy with cuts and bruises and apparently a collapsed lung off a team of nurses and doctors. 

“Where’s the rest?” Asks a bearded guy in scrubs. 

“Car behind them that stopped short only have minor concussions, they’re being treated at the scene. Dad’s DOA. Mum is coming just behind us.”

Tommy, the ghost form anyways, lets out a huge exhale. It’s as if he had been holding his breath for the past hour when he couldn’t find his mum. After seeing himself, he has stopped the search. If she were like his dad…

Tommy shuddered to think. 

But she isn’t. Mum is alive, too. 

They take Tommy’s bloodied self into a small room with blindly bright lights. A doctor dabs some orange liquid on the side of Tommy’s chest and proceeds to ram a small plastic tube inside. Tommy’s disembodied-self cringes. 

Another doctor shines a flashlight in the sleeping Tommy’s eye. 

“Nonresponsive,” he tells the nurse.

“The helicopter’s here. Get him to Trauma. Now!” Someone calls out. 

The doctors rush Tommy out of A&E and into a clunky elevator. Tommy has to jog in an effort to keep up with them. Despite not being inside of a real body, he was still out of breath as the elevator doors come to a close. 

They open onto the roof. A helicopter, its blades swooshing in the air, sits in the middle of a big red circle. 

Tommy realizes that he’s never been in a helicopter before. He doesn’t know of anyone who has. Suddenly, whatever consciousness he now possesses reminds him that Dream had offhandedly mentioned that he’d been in a helicopter when he was small.

Dream mentioned that he had some family relative who was a photographer for some nature magazine and that he took a ride on the helicopter while the family member photographed the everglades. 

Dream had explained that it was horrible. It makes you feel sick and awful and helicopters were, according to Dream, the worst possible mode of transportation. 

Dream had made Tommy swear to never go on a helicopter. How could Tommy tell him that he had no choice in the matter?

The hatch in the helicopter is opened, and Tommy’s stretcher with all the tubes and lines is loaded in. Ghost Tommy, as he figured he was, climbed in behind it. A medic bounds in after, still pumping the little plastic bulb that is apparently breathing for Tommy, since his body had the incapability of doing so on its own anymore. 

As soon as the helicopter lifted from the air, Ghostinnit understood why Dream had made him promise not to get in a helicopter. To say it was nauseating was an understatement. 

A helicopter is not like an airplane, a smooth fast bullet. A helicopter is more like a hockey puck, bounced through the sky. Up and down, side to side. Ghostinnit couldn’t fathom how these people who were working on Tommy could do it. How could they read the small computer printouts? How could they drive this thing while they communicate about Tommy though large headsets that reminded Ghostinnit of gamer headphones in some odd way. How could they do any of it with the chopper, to put it frankly, chopped around like that?

The helicopter hits an air pocket and Ghostinnit expects to be queasy. By every known fact about himself, he knows that it would. But it doesn’t. Ghostinnit doesn’t feel a thing. He wonders if the other Tommy, the Tommy on the stretcher and not just an innocent bystander, lacks the ability, too. 

Again, the conscious Tommy wonders if he’s dead. He decides that, no, he isn’t. They wouldn’t go through all the hassle of loading him on to a helicopter, wouldn’t be flying him across frozen forests if he were dead. 

Also, if he were dead, Tommy would like to imagine his dad and his granddad would have come for him by now to take him to the other side. 

He sees on the control panel that it’s past noon now. Consciousness Tommy thinks about what is happening back in the real-world around this time. 

Tubbo would be on his lunch break soon, and would probably try to message Tommy something like a funny meme or a “what’s up.” Tubbo would likely feel disheartened that Tommy couldn’t respond. 

It’s 7:00 AM in the Eastern United States, so Dream was likely not awake yet.

For Sapnap and Quackity, it’s 6:00 AM, so they were definitely not awake. 

For Technoblade, it was 4:00 AM. Tommy doubted he’d be awake, but he was never quite sure. 

Wilbur was probably still trying to contact him, Tommy assumed, and would eventually have to find out that Tommy was physically unable to respond. 

How were people supposed to find out? His fans would probably worry about him. He had no way of telling anyone that he was alive, if only by a thread. Tubbo and hall of their friends would likely get concerned that he never showed to jackbox, which would be in four hours, but Tommy doubted he’d be conscious enough by then to give him a reason. 

For all Tommy knew, he could be dead in four hours, and all of this would have been for nothing. 

If someone had told him that he was going to die today, he may have hugged his family a little tighter. He might have told Wilbur how much his music meant to him. He might have told Tubbo how much he valued him. 

They hit another bump in the air, and Ghost-Tommy willed with everything in his soul that he could wake up and tell everyone he was alright. 

To his dismay, the Tommy being pumped in and beeping sporadically as medics fussed about him remained immobile. 

This was going to be a long day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have the next six chapters planned out and it seems like this book is going to be ~30 parts long. Whoops. Luckily the parts aren't very long, so this'll be fine. Hope you all know you're here for the long haul now, this is only going to get more angsty from here I assure you. We're not even at the part of the book that never fails to have me SOB so let's get it! 
> 
> Chapters will be pretty frequent I hope, I'm trying to do once a day but we shall see how my school schedule likes that. I'll typically post in the morning EST for this book if you want to know when to check back in, but I can't promise I'll keep a schedule. 
> 
> Can't wait to see you tomorrow with either a Dream or Ranboo POV. :D


	8. 7:02 AM EST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream gets cat food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a filler chapter, sorry. Plot filled ones ahead, so maybe if you all are lucky we'll get the next one posted later today. :D

Dream doesn’t usually get up this early in the morning. It appears that sleeping on the couch makes his body have other plans, though, because as the harsh Floridian sun shines through the windows, he has no choice but to get up. 

Patches doesn’t like that Dream’s gotten up, though, because that means she’s moved from her comfy spot on top of him. 

Dream fell asleep watching a movie, so he’s still in his jeans, and there’s a half-eaten bowl of popcorn next to him. 

_ Gross _ , he thinks. 

It’s not always he gets to treat himself like that and do something just for the pure enjoyment of it. Dream’s always grinding away at some sort of work, and he doesn’t always get leisure time. 

For some reason, despite sleeping in an awkward position on the couch, Dream felt good about the day. He felt like he’d actually slept for the first time in forever, and he felt good. 

Dream went to feed Patches and realized he was low on her fancy feast. He gave her one of the last cans, but he decided he needed to drive to the store to get more. 

Driving was something Dream liked to do. When he first learned to drive, which seems like ages ago, even if it was just barely five years, he felt this amazing freedom that he could go where he wanted and do what he wanted. He no longer needed his parents’ permission or to ask his older sister for rides. He was in charge. 

It was liberating. 

He gets some cat food and some snacks for himself, and thanks to the college-aged student that was unfortunate enough to work an early morning shift on a Thursday. 

The drive home is longer than the drive there because he’s hit the morning commute traffic. He is silently thankful that his commute to work consists of going into his home office in the room next to his bedroom. He didn’t have to make sure he got up early enough to account for traffic. 

He was really lucky. 

Patches is thankful for the food, but she’s more thankful that Dream is home. 

Dream goes into his office and starts up the computer. The SMP is quiet at this hour. The “kids” are in school, and most of the adults can’t be bothered to be up at this hour. The server, usually loaded with chaos and yelling and angst and sadness, was  _ peaceful _ . 

Patches rubbed up against the warm computer box as it hummed. Cats always have a weird fascination for whatever it is their owner is up to, and this little girl is no different. 

She loves the computer's warm feeling, and she knows it’s a quick way to get Dream’s attention as he doesn’t like her playing with the cords and wires. 

He scoops up the cat and puts her outside the room. 

“Patches, I’m getting work done. Please.” He sighs. It’s not like she understands him, but it’s how he justifies that sad look in her eyes as she baps against his ankle. 

“You’re awfully clingy today, aren’t you?” He remarks as she scratches at the closed door. 

“Fine,” he gives in and lets the cat come right back to her spot. 

Dream can’t help but smile when she curls up just under his feet. She’s really cute. 

He snaps a photo of her and sends it to his mom. She always likes Patches photos. She says that Patches is her grand kitty, and she needs the pictures to survive. 

Overall, Dream’s morning is great. 

Hindsight knows that Dream should enjoy the peace and happiness while he can because 4,000 miles away, a good friend is having the worst possible afternoon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friend POVs will be a little boring until they find out, but if all goes according to plan someone will find out in the next friend POV. :D. I love reading your comments and theories and I'm so so so excited to see what you all think! 
> 
> Also, I don't know if people are interested but I've been thinking about helping out my dyslexic and ADHD friends by making "audio book" versions of some works where I just ASMR read this and upload it to YouTube. I always like hearing books because sometimes my attention span can't deal with lots of reading at a time. Idk if I actually will but we shall see. I'll see you guys maybe in 12 hours for a new chapter if you all are on your best behavior. :D


	9. 1:29 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy has surgery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a Tommy chapter, so major TW for blood and shit like that. 
> 
> You were all so kind in the comments I gave you another chapter today! :D

Apparently, Tommy had a lot of things wrong with him. 

A collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen. Internal bleeding of unknown origin. And, what the doctors whispered was most serious: contusions on his brain. 

There were also abrasions on both legs, which would require skin grafts, and on Tommy’s face, which would require cosmetic surgery-- but, as the doctors note, that is only if the teenager is lucky. 

Right now, in surgery, the doctors have to remove Tommy’s spleen, insert a new tube to drain the collapsed lung and find out and assess whatever else might be causing the internal bleeding. There isn’t a lot they can do for the brain. 

“We’ll just wait and see,” one of the surgeons says, looking at the CT scan of Tommy’s head. “In the meantime, call down to the blood bank. I need two units of O-positive and keep two units ahead.”

O positive. That’s Tommy’s blood type. He had no idea until that very moment. It’s not like it’s something he’d ever had to think about before. He’d been in the hospital before, but he’d never had surgery until today. 

The operating theatre is small and crowded, full of blindingly bright lights, which highlight how grubby this place is. It’s nothing like on TV, where operating rooms are like pristine theatres that could accommodate an opera singer and an audience. This theatre was nothing of the sort. 

Though buffed and shiny, the floor is dingy with scuff and marks and rust streaks, which Ghostinnit understood to be old bloodstains. 

Blood is everywhere. It does not seem to faze the doctors one bit. They slice and sew and suction through a river of it like they are washing dishes in soapy water. Meanwhile, they pump Tommy an every-replenishing stock in his veins. 

The anesthesiologist stands near Tommy’s head. She has gentle fingers. She sits and keeps an eye on all of Tommy’s vitals, adjusting the amounts of fluids and gases and drugs they’re giving him. 

She must be doing a good job because Tommy can’t seem to feel a thing even though they are yanking his body. It’s rough, messy work, nothing like that game Operation kids used to play where you had to be careful not to touch the sides as you removed a bone, or the buzzer would go off. 

The anesthesiologist absentmindedly strokes Tommy’s temples through her latex gloves. In some sort of way, it’s comforting, even if the Tommy that watches can’t feel it. 

The operation goes on, and one, and quite bluntly, Tommy is exhausted by it. He ponders how on earth the doctors have the stamina to keep up. They’re standing still, but it seems harder than running a marathon. 

Ghost-Tommy starts to zone out. He starts to wonder about his current state. If he’s not dead- at least the heart monitor keeps its beeping drum line, so he assumes he’s not- but he’s no longer in his own body, either, can he go anywhere? Is he a ghost-like, he’d assumed? Could he transport himself to a beach somewhere tropical? To his bed back home, cozy and away from all of this? To Tubbo, to let him know he was okay?

For the sake of experimentation, Tommy tries to replicate the magical gestures from famous movies and television in a meager hope something will happen. He wiggles his nose like Samantha on  _ Bewitched _ . Nothing happens. He snaps his finger. He clicks his heels. To Tommy’s dismay, however, he still stood in the corner of this operation. 

He decides to try something simple: walking through walls. It’s an ability most famous ghosts can possess. He walks into a wall, imagining that he’ll simply float through and come out on the other side. Except that what happens when he walks into the wall is that he hits a wall.

There’s a thud as he stumbles back, but it doesn’t  _ hurt _ per se. It’s just… weird.

A nurse bustles in with a bag of blood, and before the door shuts behind her, Tommy manages to slip through it. Now, the boy stands in the hospital’s corridor. There are lots of doctors and nurses in blue and green scrubs hustling around. A woman on a gurney, her hair in a gauzy blue shower cap, and IV in her arm calls out, “Arnold, Arnold.” 

Tommy walks a little farther. There are rows of operating rooms, all full of sleeping people. If the patients inside these rooms are like Tommy, why then can’t he see the people outside themselves? Is everyone else loitering about like he seems to be? He desperately wanted to meet someone in his condition. He was boiling over with questions. 

“What is this state I’m in exactly, and how do I get out of it?”

“How do I get back to my body? Can I do it by four?”

“Do I have to wait for the doctors to wake me up?”

Alas, there’s no one else around like Tommy.

Perhaps they’ve all figured out how to get to Hawaii. 

He follows a nurse through a set of automatic double doors. He’s now inside of a small waiting room. His grandmother and his aunts are here now. 

Nana, who he was supposed to be visiting, knits something fervently. It’s perhaps the beginnings of a scarf, or perhaps a blanket. Tommy isn’t quite sure. Nan’s hair is short and curly and gray; she’s been wearing it in a permanent wave, Mum says, since the 1970s. “It’s easy,” Nan says. “No muss, no fuss.” 

Aunt Susan is mum’s older sister. She’s a nurse, so surely she’s used to all this med jargon as it gets thrown about the room. Today was a day off, and she was supposed to meet them at Nan’s. Tommy doubted she wanted to spend her day off in a different hospital. 

Aunt Susan flits about nervously, chatting to the air in an effort to keep herself calm. 

Tommy overhears her on the phone with someone. 

“Anne and Tom are both in surgery. The car’s completely demolished, but the firemen have found some of their belongings in the rubble. I’ve got Martin and Tom’s phones here. We’re still waiting on word from both their surgeons about the surgeries. It’ll be a while before I can get any update.”

Tommy’s mum was also in surgery somewhere. He’d hoped he’d run into her by now and she could hug him and let him know everything would be okay. He wanted that so badly it ached. 

He just stood there, though, unable to interact. 

He’d have to make do with what he could, it seemed. And what he could watch helplessly as Aunt Susan paced on the phone and Nan grew her blanket. 

He’d never felt so helpless. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst tomorrow for my favorite guys, gals, and nonbinary pals? That sound poggers?


	10. 3:11 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wilbur makes a phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for mentions of death and also general sadness

It’d been almost four hours since he’d last heard from Tommy. 

Wilbur hadn’t noticed how much time had passed at first, but he didn’t know why Tommy hadn’t at least said anything about going out of a service zone.

Maybe Tommy’s dad would at least be able to tell Wilbur that they were going to be longer than expected. Maybe Tommy was being a prick and got his phone taken away, and then Martin would just tell Wilbur that and that Tommy would call him when he apologized. 

Wilbur scrolled through his contacts. The two had exchanged numbers when they first met in person. Tommy was embarrassed that Wilbu asked for his dad’s number, but Wilbur said it was the responsible adult thing to do. 

It rings out, and Wilbur is scared again it will go to voicemail. 

Then, there’s rustling on the other end of the line. 

“Mr. Simons! Hello, It’s Will.”

Silence at the receiver end.

“Who are you?” a woman asks. 

Wilbur’s stomach drops. He’s got the wrong number. 

“Oh I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.”

The woman speaks again, “Are you looking for Martin Simons?”

“Yes…” Wilbur drags out, now utterly confused.

“This is his phone. I’m Susan, I’m the sister-in-law.”

Wilbur knew about Tommy’s cast of characters he had for family. He vaguely remembered that Susan was Tommy’s godmother and she was very eccentric. 

“I’m Tom’s friend, Wilbur. I just wanted to ask if everything was alright, Tommy wasn’t answering his phone.”

“His phone’s not working from the cold, I’m afraid.” Susan sighs. 

“I don’t think I understand.” Wilbur states. Why would Tommy’s phone not work from the cold? Tommy was never outside long enough for that to ever happen. 

“Tom’s in the hospital, dear,” Susan says. She tries not to show the emotion in her words, but something somber slips through. 

Wilbur goes silent for a moment, thinking hard. If this was a scheduled hospital visit, Wil would have known. Something had to have happened, and suddenly his worst fears were realized, “Is he okay?”

“He’s in surgery still, hon. There was an accident, and I’m afraid that Martin…”

Susan takes in a deep inhalation. Her breath shakes as she tries to keep composure.

“Tom’s dad is no longer with us. The doctors are trying to help Anne and Tom but it doesn’t look good.”

Wilbur can feel the hot tears in his eyes. 

“What did you say your name was?” The woman asks again. 

“Wilbur, miss,” Wil sniffles. 

“Should I speak to your parents, Wilbur?” Susan asks calmly. She sounds so numb.

“Oh, I’m not a teenager. I’m 24.” 

“I see.” She says.

They both stay silent on the phone for a moment. Wilbur’s unsure what to say, and he can sense Tommy’s aunt is, too. 

“Can I see him?” Wilbur asks, not even loud enough to be a whisper.

“It might be good for you to,” the aunt says. “When he wakes up he’ll want some familiar face.”

“And if he doesn’t, it’ll be a good closure to say goodbye.”

The aunt and Will exchange their real cell phone numbers, and she tells him she’ll give updates as they come to her. Wilbur figures out that he can make it to the hospital in four hours, maybe three and a half if he speeds. 

A part of Wilbur screams at him to break down into his raw emotions and scream into the void, but he doesn’t. The only thing on his mind is being there for Tommy. Tommy, who he watched grow so much in last year. Tommy, whose dad was now gone and would need someone to look up to. 

Wilbur leaves in such a rush he doesn’t think to tell anyone else about Tommy, though. 

His only focus is driving up to see Tommy because he needs to be there for him. Call it a big brother instinct, but he just knows that the only thing in that moment that matters is being there for Tommy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friend POVs will be a lot more interesting from here on out, won't they?
> 
> Also, if you want notifs about when I post as well as some more extras and things, I've made a discord server! I'm new to discord and therefore don't know anything about it, but what I do know is that it's a good way to know what I'm up to and hang out. ~vibe~
> 
> Join the discord here: [discord](https://discord.gg/GheV34ef)


	11. 3:47 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy gets out of surgery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/
> 
> mentions of needles and medical jargon stolen from the book aha.

They’ve moved Tommy’s body out of the recovery ward into the trauma intensive-care unit, or ICU. It’s a horseshoe-shaped room with about a dozen beds and a cadre of nurses, who constantly bustle around, reading the computer printouts that churn out from the feet of our beds, recording our vital signs. 

In the middle of the room are more computers and a big desk, where another nurse sits. 

Tommy has two nurses who check in on him, along with the endless round of doctors. One is a doughy man with wispy blond hair and a mustache. Tommy isn’t particularly fond of him. 

The other is a woman with blue short hair. She calls Tommy things like “sugar” and “sweetheart” and perpetually straightens the blankets around him, even though it’s not like he’s kicking them off. 

There are so many tubes that Tommy can’t even count them all. There’s one down his throat breathing for him; one down his nose, keeping his stomach empty; one in his vein, hydrating him; one in his bladder, peeing for him; several on his chest, recording his heart-beat; another on his finger, recording his pulse. 

The ventilator that’s doing his breathing has a soothing rhythm like a metronome. Tommy doesn’t mind the sound. 

Besides the doctors and nurses and a social worker, no one has been in to see him. It’s the social worker who speaks to Tommy’s family in hushed sympathetic tones. She has a thick Irish accent and large circular glasses. 

She tells them Tommy is in “grave” condition. Tommy’s not entirely sure what that means-- grave. On TV, patients are always critical or stable. Grave sounds bad. Grave is where you go when things don’t work out here. 

“I wish there was something we could do,” Nan laments. “I feel so useless just waiting.”

“I’ll see if I can get you in to see him in a little while,” the social worker says. 

She has frizzy gray hair and a coffee stain on her blouse, but her face is kind. 

“He’s still sedated from the surgery, and he’s on a ventilator to help him breathe while his body heals from the trauma. But it can be helpful even for patients in a comatose state to hear from their loved ones.”

Aunt Susan nods solemnly. She explains that there are a few more family members on route and that one of Tommy’s friends had been informed and was driving to see him. 

Tommy wants to break down when he hears her say that. He didn’t know how or when Aunt Susan had contacted one of his friends, and he didn’t know who it was, but he was going to keel over from happiness to hear he’d see someone.

The Irish social worker nods in reply with a soft smile. “That’s good. I understand this must be quite a trial for you, but the stronger you can be, the more it will help Thomas.”

Tommy gets startled when he hears his own name. It’s another jarring reminder that they’re all talking about him in these hushed tones. 

Tommy follows the social worker back to the ICU and says a silent promise that he’ll be back soon. He stands over the beeping tubed life-less form in front of him. His skin is gray and dull. His eyes are taped shut. Tommy wished someone would take the tape off. It looks like it itches. 

The nice nurse bustles over. Her scrubs have lollipops on them, even though this isn’t a pediatric unit. 

She fixes the sheets and smoothes Tommy’s hair or the Tommy whose hair needs smoothing. Ghost-Tommy sits in a chair by his own bedside as an observer to the world and the chaos of the Intensive Care Unit. 

“How’s it going, sugar?” She asks as if they just bumped into each other in the local Sainsbury’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how hospitals work in the UK because I'm from the States and the source material is set in America so real British people please excuse the inaccuracies with your healthcare system. 
> 
> :D


	12. 4:02 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tubbo ends stream early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW//
> 
> Crying, mentions of death

Tommy hasn’t answered any of Tubbo’s texts in the past few hours, so Tubbo finally resigns himself and starts streaming. It seems like Tommy forgot Afterall, or maybe he was still at his Nan’s. The stream would go on without him; they had enough people to start playing, anyways. 

Wilbur hadn’t joined, either, which was strange. Wilbur had been texting Tubbo all day until he just… stopped. It’d been practically an hour since anyone had heard from Wilbur at all. 

Tubbo’s not far into the stream when he gets a message from Wilbur. 

_ Pick up the phone. I’m calling you. _

Tubbo quickly tries to text Wilbur he’s streaming without it looking suspicious. 

_ It’s about Tommy. I don’t have much time. I’m at a petrol station right now, and I can only talk while I’m filling up, then I have to go.  _

Tubbo replies with a simple,  _ can’t you just text me this? _

_ I don’t think this is something you want over text. _

Tubbo’s heart was pounding with fear and anxiety, but he had to remind himself that he was live. He was also trying to play quiplash, and he was likely going to lose because the timer was nearly up, and he hadn’t written anything.

_ I can handle it. Just text me.  _

_ Tommy’s been in an accident. He’s in the hospital. In a coma. I have to go, I’m on my way to visit right now. I’ll tell you all I know later, but I seriously have to get back on the road.  _

Tubbo fumbles with the stream labs and apologizes to the people he’s playing with, and ends stream after only 17 minutes. 

The call barely rings before Wilbur answers. 

“This is a sick joke to get me to end stream. You know that?” Tubbo argues. 

“I’m not joking, Tubbo, I promise. I would never--not about something like this.”

“Is he dying, Wilbur?” Tubbo asks. 

Wilbur’s silent for a moment. “I want to tell you no,” The older man begins. 

Tubbo chokes back a sob. That’s what breaks him. 

For the next minute, all that’s heard is the roaring sounds of a high-speed motorway on Wilbur’s end and light sobs on Tubbo’s. 

“Tubbo, I’m driving, so I can’t tell anyone. I know this is a lot to ask, but do you think you could relay the message?”

Tubbo thinks for a moment. “I’ll tell Phil. But then I’m coming up.”

“Tubbo, you have school tomorrow. I’ll watch over him.” Wilbur tries to argue. 

“You’re not my dad. If I want to see my dying friend in person, then I’ll miss some goddamn school.” 

Wilbur doesn’t argue back. 

“Hang up for me and call Phil, Tubbo. I’ll update you when I can.”

Tubbo presses the large red button and sighs. 

He wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and walks downstairs. 

“Hey hon, I thought you were live tonight?” His mum asks from the kitchen. 

“Mum, can you drive me to Tommy’s?” Tubbo sniffs. 

“Isn’t that something like three hours away?” His mum turns around. It's then she sees Tubbo’s red face blotched from tears. 

“Toby, darling, what’s wrong?” She goes to hug her son. 

“Tommy’s in the hospital. I need to see him. I need to know he’s okay.”

She’s quiet for a moment. 

“Pack a bag. We’ll go up and get a hotel room. I’m not driving up there just to drive back down. We’re staying for at least a night.” She sighs. 

Tubbo wishes he could be more happy about going up north to see one of his best friends, but he’s not. He’s absolutely terrified. 

He’s in the car before he rings Phil. 

Thankfully, he’s not streaming, so Phil picks up rather quickly. 

“Mate, you alright? You ended stream so abruptly. Everyone’s worried about you. Twitter’s going crazy.” Phil asks. There’s a genuine tone of concern in his voice. 

“Tommy’s in the hospital, Phil.” Tubbo tries to sound brave. 

“Oh.” Phil exhales. 

“I’ve got to go. I have to tell a few other people. Wilbur just said it’s easier to hear over phone.” Tubbo recites. He’s rehearsed this so many times in his head, unsure what to say. 

“Is he okay?” Phil asks. The concern in his voice has only risen.

“Wilbur says he’s in a coma.” 

Phil’s silent for a while. He can hear the cries making their way back into Tubbo’s eyes. “He’s going to be okay, mate. Tommy’s strong.”

“Yeah.” Tubbo agrees. 

“He is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the chapter was late! I slept in this morning ha ha.


	13. 4:39 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy gets his first round of visitors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/
> 
> Animal Rescue Hospital mentions (hurt animals), coma things, mentions of babies and birth and stuff but literally for like a singular line.

There’s a bit more of a crowd now. Uncle Lloyd, Cousin Taylor, Aunt Kathy. Tommy’s mum is the middle of five sisters, so there are plenty of relatives both here at their respective homes further away. From the sporadic updates, Tommy knows that his mum was still in surgery and should be able to join Tommy’s body in the ICU when she’s out. 

The relatives gather in the hospital waiting room. Not the little one on the surgical floor where Aunt Suan and Nan were during Tommy’s operation, but a larger one on the hospital’s main floor that is tastefully decorated in shades of mauve and has comfy chairs and sofas and magazines that are almost current. 

Everyone still talks in a hushed tone, as if being respectful to the other people waiting, vene though it’s only Tommy’s family in the waiting room. It’s all so serious, so ominous. 

Ghostinnit goes back in the hallway to get a break. 

Tommy’s Aunt Susan snuck him into a casino once. They were on a holiday and Tommy curiously asked to come with his older cousin and uncle into the casino while his parents were off doing something Tommy could no longer remember. 

Aunt Susan sat down at the pound blackjack tables. The dealer looked at Tommy, who couldn’t have been more than eleven, then at . His Godmother returned the dealer’s mildly suspicious glance with a look sharp enough to cut diamonds followed by a smile more brilliant than a gem. 

The dealer sheepishly smiled back and didn’t say a word. Tommy watched his aunt play, mesmerized. It seemed like they were in there for ten or fifteen minutes but then his parents came in search for them. It turned out the two had been gone over an hour. 

The ICU is like that. It’s impossible to tell what time of day it is or how much time has passed. There’s no natural light. And there’s a constant soundtrack of noise, only instead of the electronic beeping of slot machines and the satisfying jangle of quarters, it’s the hum and whir of all the medical equipment, the endless muffled pages over the PA, and the steady talk of the nurses. 

Tommy stands in the ICU for an undetermined amount of time. The nurse with the blue hair said she was going home. “I’ll be back tomorrow, but I wnat to see you here, sweet pea,” she said to the Tommy on the bed.

At first, Tommy thought that was a weird request. Wouldn’t she want him to be home, or moved to another part of the hospital for more stable patients? But then Tommy realized she wanted to see him in this ward as opposed to the morgue. 

The doctors keep coming around and pulling up Tommy’s eyelids and waving around a flashlight. They are rough and hurried, like they don’t consider eyelids worthy of gentleness. 

It makes Tommy realize how little in life people touch each other’s eyes. Maybe your parents will hold an eyelid up to get out a piece of dirt, or a significant other will kiss you eyelids, light as a butterfly, just before you drift off to sleep. But eyelids are not the elbows or knees or shoulder: parts of the body accustomed to being jostled. 

The social worker is back at Tommy’s beside. She is looking through his chart and talking to one of the nurses that normally sits at the big desk in the middle of the room. 

It is amazing the way they watch him, here. If they’re not waving penlights in his eyes or reading printouts that come tumbling out of bedside printers, then they are watching his vitals from a central computer screen. If anything goes slightly amiss, one of the monitors starts bleeping. There is always an alarm going off somewhere. At first, this scared Tommy, but he now realized that half of the time, when the alarms go off, it’s the machines that are malfunctioning and not the people. 

The social worker looks exhausted, as if she wouldn’t mind crawling into one of the open beds. Tommy’s not her only sick person. She has been shutting back and forth between patients and families all afternoon. She’s the bridge between the doctors and the people, and you can see the strain of balancing between those two worlds.

After she reads the chart and talks to the nurses, she goes back downstairs to Tommy’s family, who have stopped talking in hushed tones and are now all engaged in solitary activities. Nana is knitting something new, having finished the green blanket not long ago. Uncle Lloyd is pretending to nap. Aunt Kathy playing sudoku. The three cousins are taking turns on a Nintendo Switch, the sound turned to mute.

When the social worker walks into the waiting room, everyone stands up, like they’re greeting royalty. She gives a half smile, which Ghostinnit had seen her do several times already. It’s her signal that everything is okay, or status quo, and she’s just here to deliver an update, not to drop a bomb.

“Tom is still unconscious, but his vital signs are improving,” she tells the assembled relatives, who have abandoned their distractions haphazardly on the chairs. 

“He’s in with the respiratory therapists right now. They’re running tests to see how his lungs are functioning and whether he can be weaned off the ventilator.”

“That’s good news, then?” Aunt Susan asks. “I mean if he can breathe on his own, then he’ll wake up soon?”

The social worker gives a practiced sympathetic nod. “It’s a good step if he can breathe on his own. It shows his lungs are healing and his internal injuries are stabilizing. The question mark is still the brain contusions.”

“Why is that?” Cousin Ben interrupts.

“We don’t know when he will wake up on his own, or the extent of the damage to his brain. These first twenty-four hours are the most critical and Tom is getting the best possible care.”

“Can we see him?” Nan asks, grabbing the freshly knit green blanket in her fragile hand.

The social worker nods. “That’s why I’m here. I think it would be good for Tom to have a short visit. Just one or two people.”

“We’ll go,” Aunt Susan says, stepping forward. Tommy’s grandmother is by her side.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” the social worker says. “We won’t be long,” she says to the rest of the family.

The three of them walk down the hall in silence. In the elevator, the social worker attempts to prepare my grandparents for the sight of Tommy’s body, explaining the extent of his external injuries, which look bad, but are treatable. 

It’s the internal injuries that they’re worried about, she says.

She’s acting like his family are children. But they’re tougher than they look. Aunt Susan is a midwife, who every day sees the gore and horrible sight of babies being born. She says it's beautiful, the “miracle” of life, but Tommy knows better. He’s ended up on the weird side of YouTube before, and he attended health classes. He knows it's gross and awful and something nobody should ever do.

As for Nana, she’s always rescuing things: birds with broken wings, a sick beaver, a deer hit by a car. The deer went to a wildlife sanctuary, which Toomy found funny because Nan usually hates deer; they eat up her garden. “Pretty rats,” she calls them. “Tasty rats” is what Grandpa used to call them when he grills up venison steaks. But that one deer, Nan couldn’t bear to see it suffer, so she rescued it. 

Still, when they come through the automatic double doors into the ICU, both of them stop, as if repelled by an invisible barrier. Nan goes to take Aunt Susan’s hand, just like Tommy’s mum would take his hand when he was scared. Part of him wondered if that’s where mum had picked up the habit. Aunt Sue scans the beds for her nephew, but just as the social worker starts to point out where he is, Nana sees her boy and she strides across the floor to his bed.

“Hello, bug,” she says. She hasn’t called Tommy that in ages, not since he got embarrassed when she picked him up from primary school. Aunt Susan walks slowly to where his body lies still, taking little gulps of air as she comes. Maybe those screaming babies weren’t such good prep after all.

The social worker pulls over two chairs, setting them up at the foot of my bed. “Tomy, your grandmother and godmother are here.” She motions for them to sit down. “I’ll leave you alone now.”

“Can he hear us?” Nana asks. “If we talk to her, he’ll understand?”

“Truly, I don’t know,” the social worker responds. “But your presence can be soothing so long as what you say is soothing.” Then she gives them a stern look, as if to tell them not to say anything bad to upset him. Tommy knows it’s her job to warn them about things like this and that she is busy with a thousand things and can’t always be so sensitive, but for a second, he hates her.

After the social worker leaves, Nana and her eldest daughter sit in silence for a minute. Then Nana starts prattling on about the orchids she’s growing in her greenhouse. 

Aunt Susan is sitting very still, and his hands are shaking. She’s not much of a talker, save for her bouts on the phone to her husband David and to the mysterious friend she had contacted, so it must be hard for her to be ordered to chat with him now.

Another nurse comes by. She has dark hair and dark eyes brightened with lots of shimmery eye makeup. Her nails are acrylic and have heart decals on them. She must have to work hard to keep her nails so pretty. Tommy admires that.

She’s not Tommy’s nurse but she comes up to his family just the same. 

“Don’t you doubt for a second that he can hear you,” she tells them. “He’s aware of everything that’s going on.” She stands there with her hands on her hips. Tommy’s ghost can almost picture her snapping gum. Aunt Susan and Nana stare at her, lapping up what she’s telling them. 

“You might think that the doctors or nurses or all this is running the show,” she says, gesturing to the wall of medical equipment. “Nuh-uh. He’s running the show. Maybe he’s just biding his time. So you talk to him. You tell him to take all the time he needs, but to come on back."

"You’re waiting for him”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is absolutely blizzarding outside my house today, so hopefully, I will have a snow day tomorrow or something and I can write some more chapters for y'all. :D
> 
> Also for those who want to know where we are in the book, we're about 124 pages in of a 345-page book, so we've got plenty of content still in store for you.


	14. 11:36 AM CST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sapnap joins a discord call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one has a lot of dialouge, sorry if you aren't a fan of that. 
> 
> TW/
> 
> really bad dad jokes, mentions of death, people dealing with grief in their own ways.

Sapnap was 13 and Dream was 15 when he first felt like this. The hopelessness that a friend thousands of miles away was hurt and there was nothing you could do about it. 

Dream apparently stepped on a nail and he got sent to the ER. Sapnap spent his afternoon in a heap of worry because Dream was in Florida and he was in Texas and there was no way to know if Dream was okay. 

Turns out he only needed some bandages and a tetanus shot, but it was a terrifying experience to feel like there was nothing he could do but wait for Dream to get back online and tell him he was alright.

That’s all Sapnap could think of as he sat on a discord call with practically the entire Dream SMP just waiting for Phil to periodically update about Tommy’s “condition.”

It was Phil who had told them all why Tubbo freaked out and left the discord call. Phil had messaged a few people, and then those people messaged more people and then a bunch of people all started individually freaking out before deciding it would be more productive to worry together than worry alone. 

Every update Phil gave seemed to bring worse and worse news. 

The first thing they had heard was that Tommy was in the hospital. Then, they heard he was in an accident and in a coma. Then they heard doctors weren’t sure he’d wake up. THen they’d heard his dad had passed away. Then that his mum was not doing well, either. 

“It says that people in comas have permanent brain damage,” Skeppy worries. 

Sapnap wants to tell him that’s not true, but he can’t. He doesn’t know the extent of Tommy’s injuries. Nobody does. Phil said he was going down to the hospital to get reliable information from the source. Wilbur and Tubbo were unreliable sources at the best of times, so it seemed reasonable.

“He’s going to be okay.” Bad tries to reason with everyone. Ever the optimist. 

“We don’t know that,” Fundy sighs, “Tommy could die and we’re all just sat here doing nothing. It’s fucked up.” 

Bad doesn’t “language” him. It doesn’t seem like the right time to. 

They’re silent. 

The discord makes a sound to recognize that someone has joined the call. 

“Hey, George.” Niki says. 

“I got like 100 texts, what the hell is happening?” He sighs. 

“Tommy’s in the hospital,” Eret says, “Nobody knows what’s happening.”   
  


“What’s wrong with him?” George asks. 

Everyone tries to put it into words. 

“He’s dying,” Fundy says bluntly. 

“No he’s not.” Sapnap argues. “He’s not going to fucking die.” 

Sapnap’s breath hitches. Why is he so emotional about this. Tommy and him were friends, sure, but not great ones. They sat on calls together but it was always with other people they were closer to. 

Maybe it was remembering the feeling six years ago when Dream stepped on that nail. Maybe it was the regret he didn’t know the kid more. Maybe it was the dread he’d never get to know him more. 

“He better not.” George huffs into his microphone.   
  


“Yeah,” Quackity agrees. “How else are we going to get our clickbait titles and thumbnails with Tommy if he isn’t here?”

For the first time in the hour they’ve known about Tommy, everyone laughs. It’s a wet and pained laugh, but it’s not forced. It holds to weight and emotion and denial in every exhale, but it feels cathartic. 

“I could use some more jokes,” Niki says. Sapnap can hear her soft smile. 

“How many apples grow on a tree?” Karl says. 

“What?” George replies.

“All of them.”

Another laugh, “That’s the stupidest joke I’ve ever heard, Karl.” Sapnap says. 

Karl thinks for a moment, “What do you call it when a group of apes start a company?”

“This better be appropriate,” Bad warns. 

“Monkey business!” Karl exclaims. 

Sapnap falls back into his chair. The jokes Karl keeps telling are corny and bad, but it’s a good distraction. It feels easier to have Karl continue on with bad jokes in a small attempt to bring something to the call that isn’t sadness or worry. 

Pretty soon other people are sharing dad jokes, too. It feels natural and normal. 

A ping from Phil shuts everyone up rather quickly. 

_ Heard from Wilbur that they’re going to take Tommy off the ventilator soon. _

The first bit of good news Phil’s delivered. There’s a sigh of momentarily relief. 

“It’s a good sign if he can breathe on his own,” Niki explains. “It means some of his injuries are beginning to heal.”

Maybe everything was going to be okay after all, Sapnap thinks.

“Alright, who’s telling the next joke?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally finished my book outline for all the chapters. Looks like we're gearing up for 29-ish chapters if all goes according to plan. 
> 
> Hoped you liked a little tny bit of wholesome in the sea of ouchies and angst I've been churning out.


	15. 5:59 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy figures it out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally here! The reason the book is called what it's called. I forgot it takes for long for it to finally sink in for our boy. 
> 
> TW/
> 
> afterlife mentions, idk please let me know if there's something else that needs a warning

Ghostinnit is a little freaked out right now.

Aunt Susan and Nanainnit left a while ago, but he stayed behind here in the ICU. Tommy is sitting in one of the chairs, going over their conversation, which was very friendly and normal, and non-disturbing. Until they left. As Nan and Sue walked out of the ICU, with Ghost-Tommy following, Nana turned to Aunt Susan and asked: “Do you think he decides?”

“Decides what?”

Nana looked uncomfortable. She shuffled her feet. “You know? Decides,” she whispered.

“What are you talking about?” Aunt Susan sounded exasperated and tender at the same time.

“I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just thought Martin is gone now, and he’s with your dad Peter wherever the next life is. What if they want him to join them? What if _he wants_ to join them?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Aunt Susan snapped.

“Oh,” was all Nana said. The inquiry was over.

Tommy knows his dad and granddad aren’t here. They are not holding his hand or cheering him on. Tommy knew them well enough to know that if they could, they would. But neither of them is here.

And it’s while contemplating this that Tommy thinks about what the nurse said. He’s running the show. And suddenly, he understands what Nana was really asking Aunt Susan. She had listened to that nurse, too. She got it before Tommy did.

If he stays. If he lives. It’s up to him.

All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to Tommy.

How is he supposed to decide this? How can he possibly stay without his Dad? How can he leave without his Mum? Or family? Or friends? This is too much for someone. Ghost-Tommy doesn’t even understand how it all works, why he’s there in the state that he’s in, or how to get out of it if he even wanted to. If Tommy were to say, “I want to wake up,” would he wake up right now? He had already tried snapping his heels to find mum and trying to beam himself to Hawaii, and that didn’t work. This seems a whole lot more complicated.

But in spite of that, Tommy believes it’s true.

He hears the nurse’s words again. “I am running the show. Everyone is waiting on me.”

Tommy decides. He knows this now.

And this terrifies him more than anything else that has happened today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chap but I think it's really important. 
> 
> Also, the next chapter is going to have some MAJOR TW so please consult the end notes tomorrow if you can't deal with it, I totally understand. Anyways, have a great day all my lovely friends I love seeing all the comments they're so nice and great! Leave some and I'll respond as much as I can!


	16. 6:13 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wilbur has spicy déjà vu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MASSIVE TW//
> 
> Mentions of unaliving yourself, psych wards, and general spicy depression
> 
> This is mostly based off 1) my own experiences and 2) Wilbur's album "Your City Gave Me Asthma" which has lots of references to depression and other dark subject matter. 
> 
> /strong/ This chapter will not impact much of the rest of the story, so please see the end notes if you have to /strong/

Wilbur stares blankly as the car lights in front of him start to blink on. The sun is going down rapidly as the evening hours begin, and Wilbur still feels too far away from Tommy. 

Wilbur’s wrists sting with memories. 

The last time he was at a hospital was for himself. What feels like months was really years ago when he was lying in A&E as doctors worried over him. 

Wilbur had wanted to die. It was a culmination of a hundred little reasons coming full-force at him, but he had enough of the stillness and loneliness, and it seemed like a rational response at the moment. 

After years of therapy and a one-month stay in a psych ward over a summer break from uni, Wilbur realized it hadn’t been a rational response. 

Wilbur’s brush with death when the black spots dashed across his view and he felt lighter than himself was something he never wanted Tommy to experience. 

He never wanted to see Tommy attached to the wires of an IV pole or in those scratchy awful hospital gowns or have Tommy be the subject of doctors whispering and worrying and blank pitiful stares. 

It was too familiar. 

Wilbur keeps driving, though, because he knows Tommy needs him. Were there not a support system for Wilbur in his crisis those years ago, he wouldn’t be the person he was today. He wouldn’t have this incredible career and his music. He might not even be here today. 

The car hums as Wilbur keeps driving. There’s music coming from the radio, but Wilbur’s no longer paying attention to it.

He just knows how scared Tommy must be. Being alone in a hospital is the worst feeling in the world. And Wilbur knows he’s not alone: his family is there. But he still can’t shake that he has to be there. 

A ringtone coming across the radio breaks him from his thoughts. He taps the button on his dashboard, and the voice of Tommy’s aunt comes through. 

“Hello, Sue,” Wil greets. In the past few hours, the two had grown quite acquainted. She’d call him with updates, and it felt calming. 

“Nothing new just wanted to make sure you’re alright. You still on your way?”

“Mmhmm. I’m almost there, actually.”

“Brilliant. We’re all in the 1st-floor waiting room. Tommy’s still upstairs in the Intensive Care Unit. I went to go visit him, actually.”

“How is he?”

She hesitates, “He’s going to be okay.”

Wilbur knew that meant he looked bad. That’s what you say when you don’t want to say that Tommy looked like he’d been dragged through hell.

After scolding someone, she hangs up something about stopping fighting with the switch, and Wilbur’s again left in silence.

He’d be there soon, and he was going straight up to visit Tommy. His friend needed him, and he made it his vow to be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wilbur has spicy memories of the last time he was at a hospital and it was for a not very good reason. He's still driving and the sun is starting to go down. Aunt Sue calls with a brief update. He tells her he'll be there soon. He really wants to see Tommy and make sure his friend knows he's there.
> 
> :')\
> 
> Ty all for the kudos and the loves! Wilbur's almost there Pog!! :D


	17. 6:40 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy sees that Wilbur's arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
> 
> TW/
> 
> Swearing and general angst and SBI family dynamics implied

He’s here. Wilbur. He’s here. 

Tommy walked as far away from the ICU as he could once he started feeling too “overwhelmed” with this whole “choice” business. He had settled in an empty room in the maternity ward, wanting to be far away from his relatives and even farther away from the ICU and that nurse, or more specifically, what that nurse said and what Tommy now understands. 

He needed to be somewhere where people wouldn’t be sad, where the thoughts concerned life, not death. So that’s why Tommy came here, the land of screaming babies. Actually, the wail of the newborns is comforting. They have so much fight in them already.

But it’s quiet in this room now. Tommy’s ghost sits on the windowsill, staring out at the night. A dark blue sedan screeches into the car park, shaking Tommy out of his reverie. He peers down in time to catch a glimpse of a “musician on board” bumper sticker disappearing into the darkness. Only one person Tommy knows is corny enough to willing to display something embarrassing like that on the back of their car. 

Tommy holds his breath, waiting for Wilbur to appear out of the tunnel. And then he’s here, walking up the ramp, hugging his parka against the winter night. Tommy can see the soft, round glasses of his friend glinting in the floodlights. 

All-day long, Tommy had been imagining Wilbur’s arrival, and in Tommy’s fantasy, he rushes to greet the brunette, even though he can’t see Tommy and even though, from what the apparition can tell so far, it’s nothing like that movie Ghost, where you can walk through your loved ones so that they feel your presence.

But now that Wilbur is here, Tommy feels paralyzed. He’s  _ scared  _ to see him. He’d seen Wilbur cry a few times, but never for long. Tommy acts like a big and manly person on camera, but he’s a kind and soft-hearted person behind the facade he fronts. If Wilbur is crying, it will kill Tommy’s soul. Forget this “my choice” business. That alone would do him in.

Tommy watches as Wilbur makes his way to the hospital’s main entrance. Just before he comes to the covered awning and the automatic doors, he looks up into the sky. He hesitates, almost like he’s waiting for something. Tommy feels his face go cold as Wilbur scans the large building. It's just as if Wilbur is looking for him.

Wilbur’s face, illuminated by the lights, is blank, like someone vacuumed away all his personality, leaving only a mask. He doesn’t look like himself. But at least he’s not crying.

That gives Tommy the guts to go to him now. Or rather to himself, to the ICU, which is where Tommy knows Wilbur will want to go. Wilbur clearly has talked to Aunt Susan if Aunt Susan knows he’s coming, so Tommy imagines he’ll join the waiting-room vigil later. But right now, he’s here for his friend.

Back in the ICU, time stands still as always. One of the surgeons who worked on Tommy earlier in the day is back to check him. 

The light is dim and artificial and kept to the same level all the time, but even so, the circadian rhythms win out, and a nighttime hush has fallen over the place. It is less frenetic than it was during the day like the nurses and machines are all a little tired and have reverted to power-save mode.

So when Wilbur’s voice reverberates from the hallway outside the ICU, it really wakes everyone up.

“What do you mean I can’t go in?” he booms.

Tommy, the ghost of him anyways, makes his way across the ICU, standing just on the other side of the automatic doors. He hears the orderly outside explain to Wilbur that he is not allowed in this part of the hospital.

“This is bullshit!” Wilbur yells.

Inside the ward, all the nurses look toward the door, their heavy eyes wary. Tommy can almost hear what they’re likely thinking: Don’t we have enough to deal with inside without having to calm down crazy people outside?

Tommy so desperately wants to explain to them that Wilbur isn’t crazy. That he never yells, except for very special occasions.

The graying middle-aged nurse who doesn’t attend to the patients but sits by and monitors the computers and phones gives a little nod and stands up as if accepting a nomination. She straightens her creased white pants and makes her way toward the door. She’s really not the best one to talk to him. Tommy wishes he could warn them that they ought to send Nurse Ramirez, the one who reassured his grandmother and godmother (and simultaneously freaked him the fuck out). She’d be able to calm Wilbur down. 

But this one is only going to make it worse. Tommy tightly follows her through the double doors where Adam is arguing with an orderly. The orderly looks at the nurse. “I told him he’s not authorized to be up here,” he explains. The nurse dismisses him with the wave of a hand.

“Can I help you, young man?” she asks Wilbur. Her voice sounds irritated and impatient, like the nursing home ladies from when Tommy’s grandfather was sick that were so fed up with not having visitors they would take it out on anyone.

Will clears his throat, attempting to pull himself together. “I’d like to visit a patient,” he says, gesturing toward the doors blocking him from the ICU.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” she replies.

“But my best friend, Tom, he’s—”

“He’s being well cared for,” the nurse interrupts. She sounds tired, too tired for sympathy, too tired to be moved by friendship.

“I understand that. And I’m grateful for it,” Wilbur says. He’s trying his best to play by her rules, to sound mature, but I hear the catch in his voice when he says: “I really need to see him.”

“I’m sorry, young man, but visitations are restricted to immediate family.”

Tommy can hear Wilbur gasp. Immediate family. The nurse doesn’t mean to be cruel. She’s just clueless, but Wil won’t know that. Tommy feels the need to protect him and to protect the nurse from what he might do to her. That Wilbur and Tommy may not be  _ family,  _ but they had created a bond stronger than other blood ties. They weren’t related, but they were still a family.

Tommy reaches out for Wilbur on instinct, even though he cannot really touch him. But his back is to Tommy’s form now. His shoulders are hunched over, his legs starting to buckle.

Wilbur is so defeated looking as he apologizes in a tone lower than a whisper. And without anything more, he retreats to the hallway. Something stops Tommy from following him. Perhaps respect for his privacy, perhaps the unchained fear in his abdomen that Wilbur was genuinely so hurt like this. 

Wilbur fumbles with his phone and scrolls through his contacts. His number lands on someone, maybe one of the only people, who might be able to help calm him. 

It dials and rings. 

“Wil? Wil, are you alright?”

“Hi, Niki.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a strong compulsion to leave cliffhangers. It's a bad habit. I am so sorry, but I will not stop it. 
> 
> :D


	18. 6:48 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niki talks to Wilbur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niki is so wholesome and I love her so much. (She lives in the UK now so I've given her UK time zone for chapter title)

Niki didn’t like hearing the pain in Wilbur’s voice. Of course, she knew about Tommy's situation and that Wilbur was going to see him, which only amplified her worry when he called her audibly upset. 

“They said only family is allowed to visit.” Wilbur sniffs at her. 

“Who said that?” Niki tries to console. 

“The-The nurses. At the ICU. They won’t let me in because only family can visit when he’s in that room.”

“When they move him, you can see him,” Niki suggests.

“I don’t know when or if he’ll get moved, Niki. If he died in there and I didn’t get to tell him I was here?” Wilbur falters for a moment. He takes a hard breath into the receiver of the phone. 

“I can’t take that chance. I have to see him, Niki.”

Niki thinks for a moment. Ever the problem-solver, she tries to figure out how she should counsel her friend when everything seemed awful and heartbreaking. 

“Have you talked to his family?” Niki asks. 

Wilbur’s silent for a moment. “Not since I got here.”

“Maybe you should. Surely they’ll escort you to him.”

“No,” Wilbur states, “I can’t let them see me cry like this. They’ll think I’m more crazy than they already do. I don’t know these people. I’m not doing that to them. I’m not going to have a breakdown in front of a grieving family. That just seems rude.”

Niki wants to argue that they would want Wilbur to visit Tommy. That Tommy’s aunt invited him to visit for that reason. That Wilbur wasn’t a burden on their family, it would be comforting for any family to know someone cared that much. 

She didn’t argue, though. She just consoled the hurt man with empty  _ it’ll be okay _ ’s, and  _ you can do this _ ’s. 

“Tubbo’s texted me.” Wilbur states. He sounds hollow through the phone, but Niki can’t tell if it’s just how the phone has transmitted him to sound, “His mum is almost here. Phil’s coming, too, supposedly.”

“You should go greet them when they get here. I’m sure they’ll want to see you.” Niki tells him gently. 

Wilbur lets out a noncommittal hum.

“I’m going to hang up, Niki. Thanks for talking to me.”

“Hey, Wilbur?”

“Hmm?”

“Tommy’s a lot stronger than he looks. He’s a fighter. You get in there and remind him that, won’t you?”

Wilbur sighs something sorrowful, “Yeah, Niki. I’ll remind him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chap, but setting up some big ones later! 
> 
> If you've read the book before, I need help deciding what will happen instead of the Brooke Vega thing. Come to the discord and the channel #help-me-write-please for ideas I'm STUCKKK on that. 
> 
> If you don't know what that means, do not worry. You'll find out.


	19. 7:08 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy watches and Wilbur and some friends conspire a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus! Hope you all didn't miss me too much! I've been busy but I hope this will make up for my absence: some SBI for you hungry lads. 
> 
> TW/
> 
> Idk, crying and general sadness vibes?

Tommy watches Wilbur disappear down the hall. He meant to follow the sad man, but Tommy finds himself practically glued to the linoleum, unable to move his phantom legs. It’s only after Wilbur’s disappeared around a corner that Tommy rouses himself and trails after him, but by that point, Wilbur has already gone inside the elevator. 

By now, Tommy has figured out that he lacks any supernatural abilities. He can’t float through walls or dive down stairwells. He can only do the things he’d be able to do in real life, except that apparently, what he does in his Tommy-world is invisible to everyone else. At least, that seems to be the case because no one looks twice when he opens doors or hits the elevator button. He can touch things, even manipulate door handles and the like, but Tommy can’t really feel anything or anybody. It’s like he’s experiencing everything through a fish-bowl. It doesn’t really make sense to the teenager, but then again, nothing that’s happening today makes much sense.

Tommy assumes that Wilbur must be headed to the waiting room to join the vigil, but when his phantom body gets there, his family is not there. There’s a stack of coats and sweaters on the chairs, and Tommy recognizes his cousin Taylor’s bright orange down jacket. Taylor lives in the country and likes to hike in the woods, so she says that the neon colors are necessary to keep drunk hunters from mistaking her for a bear.

Tommy looks at the clock on the wall. 7:10. It could be dinnertime. 

He wanders back down the halls to the cafeteria, which has the same fried-food, boiled-vegetable stench as cafeterias everywhere. Unappetizing smell aside, it’s full of people. The tables are crammed with doctors and nurses and nervous-looking medical students in short white jackets and stethoscopes so shiny that they look like toys. They are all chowing down on cardboard pizza and freeze-dried mashed potatoes. It takes Tommy a while to locate his family, huddled around a table. Aunt Kathy is chatting to her daughter Taylor. Nana is paying careful attention to his turkey sandwich.

Aunt Susan is back to blabbering on her phone, and it doesn’t take long for him to notice she’s back on the phone to Uncle David, her husband. She had been on the phone with him practically all day.

Tommy had gathered from eavesdropping on her that his Uncle David and some other of his mum’s sisters were on “mother-watch” in the first hospital Tommy had gone to, the one with the helicopter. She had been well-enough to not need to be airlifted as he had, it sounded like. 

Uncle David and Aunt Susan kept each part of the family informed about the other, and it seemed like it was Uncle David’s turn to give an update because Aunt Susan was nodding dramatically into the end of her phone. 

Tommy walked away because, quite frankly, it was more imperative that at this moment, he caught up with Wilbur. He still had no clue where the brunette had gone. He does a final sweep of the cafeteria to make sure Wilbur is not there, and he’s just about to go back to the ICU when he hears a familiar voice. 

“Mate, just go find his family.” 

Tommy stops. He had expected to find Wilbur alone somewhere, but he’s at the hospital’s main entrance in a tight bear hug with Phil. Phil looks just as equally tired as Wilbur, but from the way he’s not more than three steps inside the building, Tommy deduces he just arrived. 

Wilbur sniffles. “I can’t burden them with this. They’ve gone through so much today I’m sure they don’t want to babysit some adult stranger crying about not getting into the ICU.”

Tommy wants to protest. All of them are looking for some sort of distraction. They’d probably jump at the thought of doing something productive. 

Tommy cannot say this, however, because his current ghostly-form has yet to have anyone actually hear him. 

Tommy just desperately wants to hug Phil, too. He wants to be a part of this hug and let everyone feel safer. It hasn’t exactly set in that they’re all so upset because they’re scared of Tommy dying, but he’s quickly reminded of that when Kristin comes through the revolving doors. 

“Oh my god, is Tommy okay? Are we too late?” She rushes when she sees Wilbur in a heap of tears hugging Phil. 

“They won’t let Wil in to see him,” Phil replies. 

Phil feels the need to add to his sentence, “But Tommy’s still alive. Still in the coma, but still alive.”

It’s all the reality check Tommy needs. It’s like he keeps forgetting unless he’s actively reminding himself that he’s not physically with his best friends; he’s some ghost-consciousness because his real body is three floors up with tubes and gauze and half a dozen beeping monitors. 

“Well then, let’s get Wilbur in there.”

“How?” Wilbur wipes his eyes with the back of his hand as he turns to Kristin. 

“I don’t know how yet,” she admits. 

Kristin takes charge and leads the guys down a random hallway. She paces for a moment. 

She thinks for a moment before she starts rattling on door handles while Phil, Wilbur, and a PhanTommy curiously look on. 

When she finds a closet unlocked, she sneaks inside, and the two corporeal and one ghost boy follow suit. Suddenly they’re jammed into a tight closet fumbling in the dark for a light switch. 

“What exactly are we doing?” Phil asks.

“Getting a disguise. Help me find a light.” Kristin replies.

“Kristin, I’m not sure this kind of thing works outside of the movies.” Wilbur cautiously rebuttes. 

“Well,” Kristin taps her foot against the cold ground, “Every fiction has its base in fact.”

“I still don’t understand why we don’t just go to the family?” Phil, ever the rational adult, contests. 

“You know, when the nurse threatened to call security on me,” Wilbur began, “my first thought was, ‘I’ll just call Tommy’s dad, and he’ll fix this.’”

Wilbur stops and takes a few breaths. “It just keeps walloping me over and over, and it’s like it’s the first time every time,” he says in a husky voice.

“I know,” Phil replies in a whisper. 

“Anyhow,” Wilbur shakes, resuming his search for the light switch, “I can’t go to his aunt. She’s dealing with so much. This is something I have to do for myself.”

Tommy feels like screaming at him. 

But he knows that sometimes Wil needs to do things the dramatic way. It’s a part of the theatre-kid nature deep inside him. He is fond of the Grand Gesture, whether that was creating a whole short-film for a girl he fancied to act in or creating some elaborate zoom murder-mystery party for Tubbo’s birthday because they all couldn’t be together in real life. 

Now, Tommy can see that Wilbur is concentrating on the new task at hand. He’s not sure what he and Kristin had conspired in some weird telekinetic moment, but they seem to be on the same page about their plan. 

Whatever it is, Tommy’s grateful for it. It seems to have pulled Wilbur out of his emotional stupor Tommy witnessed in the lobby. Tommy had seen him get focused like this- when he’s writing a new song or trying to convince Tommy to get out of his comfort zone a little- and nothing, not even a meteorite crashing into the planet, not even a best friend in the ICU, can dissuade him. 

Besides, it’s the best friend in the ICU that’s necessitating Wilbur and Kristin’s ruse, to begin with. And from what Tommy has gathered, it’s the oldest hospital trick in the book. Taken straight from that movie, _The Fugitive,_ Tommy got stuck watching when his mom insisted on some family bonding over Christmas. 

Tommy has his doubts about “the plan.” Apparently, so does Phil. 

“Don’t you think that nurse would recognize you, hotshot?” Phil asks, “You did yell at her.”

“She doesn’t have to recognize him if she doesn’t see him,” Kristin corrects. It's dark in the room, but Tommy can still see the grin on her and Wilbur’s faces. Their mischief was at an equal level, and Tommy wished he could really be there to partake in fun. 

“Maybe this plan could work a little better if we could fucking see,” Phil fumbles around his pocket before pulling out his phone for a flashlight. 

Unfortunately, the dim glow reveals that the tiny broom closet is actually full of brooms, a bucket, and a pair of mops. It lacks any of the disguises Kristin was hoping for.

If he could, Tommy would inform the three that the hospital has locker rooms, where the doctors and nurses can stow their street clothes and where they change into their scrubs or their lab coats. The only generic hospital garb sitting around are those embarrassing gowns that they put patients in. 

One of them could probably throw on a gown and cruise the hallways in a wheelchair with no one the wiser, but such a getup would not get Wilbur into the ICU.

“Shit,” Wilbur says. 

“We can keep trying,” Kristin comforts. “There are like ten floors in this place. I’m sure there are other unlocked closets.”

Wilbur sinks to the floor. Kristin and Phil share a look that holds a conversation. Phil had told Tommy that it’s like a secret marriage superpower: the ability to know someone so well you know what they want to say without even saying it. 

Suddenly, the couple sank down on the floor with Wilbur and hugging him like he’s their child who skinned his knee on the playground. 

“This is stupid.” Wilbur pouts. 

“You could fake an illness or something to get into the ICU,” Phil suggests.

“No, that wouldn’t work,” Wilbur replies. 

“I was thinking more like a distraction. You know, like making the fire alarm go off, so all the nurses come running out.” Wilbur admits. 

“Do you really think sprinkler and panicked nurses are good for Tommy?” Kristin asks. 

“No.” Wilbur huffs, “But just something so that they all look away for half a second, and I can stealthily sneak in.”

“They’ll find you out right away,” Kristin remarks.

“They’ll throw you out on your butt,” Phil reminds.

Wilbur shakes his head and plays at his fingers, “I don’t care. I only need a second.”

Kristin gives him a quizzical look, “WHy? I mean- what can you do in a second?”

Wilbur pauses for a moment. “So I can show him that I’m here. That someone is still here.”

Phil and Kristin have another eye-contact conversation, and they must have agreed not to say anything out loud after that. The three- well, four since Tommy is still awkwardly sat on the floor with them just unable to show them he’s there- sit and wade in their own silence, each lost in their own thoughts. 

After about five minutes, Wilbur knocks on his forehead. 

“Of course,” he says.

“What?”

“Time to activate the Bat Signal.”

“Huh?”

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ik i usually post in the mornings but I hope this inconsistent upload schedule didn't bother everyone too much. Currently working out some bits so idk if I'll upload tomorrow. Check the discord for updates i guess. idk.


	20. 7:45 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kristin rationalizes Wilbur's plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter just setting up the next one.

Wilbur reached for his phone and began to furiously type. Kristin and Phil coaxed Wil to at least leave the closet floor. 

Now, Kristin and Phil had been sat in some uncomfortable chairs down the hall while Wilbur paced nervously. 

“I haven’t got responses from most people, but some people said they’d be glad to help.” Wilbur had told Kristin when she asked what he was up to. 

Apparently, Wilbur’s plan involved contacting as many famous brits as he knew to try and create some sort of YouTube army. He was quick and focused with his words, and Kristin didn’t exactly understand it. All she knew was people were on their way to try and help Will commit a crime of Breaking and Entering. 

“Kristin, are we doing the right thing?” Phil turned to his wife as soon as Wilbur had excused himself to go to the bathroom. 

“What do you mean?” She replied. Her hands felt cold and sweaty against the armchair, but Phil was quick to latch on to hers, and she felt better.

“I mean, I want him to get to see Tommy, but don’t you think this is a bit much? Calling people, he barely knows to create some sort of major distraction and cause chaos in a hospital? Shouldn’t we stop him from doing something this stupid?”

“He needs this, I think,” Kristin responds. She shakes her head and blinks back a tear. 

“I think he needs to cope with Tommy in his own way. If this is what he needs to do, I don’t want to stop him. Organizing this mess?” Kristin gestures to something vague in the air, “It’s kept his mind busy for the past forty minutes. He’s creating a distraction for the nurses so he can sneak in, sure, but I think he’s also creating a distraction for himself.”

Phil’s face contorted to ponder Kristin’s words. 

“Is that even healthy?” He musters. 

“I doubt it. But he needs something to keep him from breaking down. I think this is at least justified. His best friend is dying, Phil. I think he needs something to help him process.” Kristin tries to reason. 

It seems unreal to everyone that Tommy has been on the brink of death for almost 10 hours. It is still too foreign a thought for everyone, and for Kristin to say it out loud felt wrong. The words felt bitter and ugly on her tongue. To think that Tommy was dying alone in a room was reason enough for her to join up with Wilbur in his hopelessly dumb plan to break in and see him. 

Kristin could see Phil flinch at the sudden reality check that Tommy was the reason they were breaking into the ICU in the first place. 

“Tommy’s not dying, Kris,” Phil stammers back. “He’s not going to die.”

Kristin rubs her hand against Phil’s. 

“He’s sixteen, Kristin.” Phil cries. “He can’t die yet.”

There’s a calm silence as Phil cries and Kristin comforts him.

Wilbur returns, and Kristin and Phil try to put their brave faces back on for him. It’s like Wilbur is the fragile kid they’re protecting. 

“We’ve got an hour before the plan is in action,” Wilbur announces. 

Wilbur claps his hands together. 

“We should run to the party store for some supplies.”

“Supplies?” Phil questions.

“Well, a perfect plot needs more than people. It needs the catalyst.”

“And what does that mean?” Kristin asks, not entirely sure where Will’s head is at. 

“I need a dozen cans of silly string, is what that means.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for my hiatus! Updates will be less frequent because of school, but I'm really excited to show you all where my head's at for this story. 
> 
> Also: Who did Wilbur call? Who's showing up to create the distraction? What is the silly string for? Will Tommy Stay?
> 
> LMK what you're thinking, I love reading comments and things. :D


	21. 8:57 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy watches his friends make fools of themselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw/
> 
> death? shenanigans? disregard for hospital property?

Tubbo comes first. He was already on his way before Wilbur incessantly texting over his “evil scheme,” so he wasn’t far. 

Despite not having a corporeal form, something in Tommy’s soul breaks seeing Tubbo. He arrives disheveled, practically dragging his worn and tired mum into the hospital with him. 

Phil greets Tubbo with a firm and long hug. Tommy wants so hard to feel the embrace, but he is only idle as he watches his best friends break down in the world around him.

Wilbur is still out getting his mysterious supplies when Tubbo arrives, so it’s only Phil and Kristin that is at the hospital entrance when he opens the glass door. 

Phil explains to Tubbo that Wilbur wanted to break into the ICU because there were no visitors allowed. 

“We can’t even go see him?” Tubbo whines and Tommy feels so small. 

“No, we can’t go in to see him. He’s in really bad condition, Tubbo.”

Tubbo nods in understanding, “So we are going to try and see him. Isn’t that a bad idea?”

Phil smiles for the first time since he’d got to the hospital, “yeah. It’s a horrible idea. But Wilbur is just processing grief and shit. We’re just trying to be supportive.”

“Okay,” Tubbo agrees. Tommy doesn’t understand this whole plot, so he’s not sure why Tubbo agrees to it so quickly. 

Jack Manifold arrives, and Wilbur still isn’t back. Jack also lives in the midlands, so he tells Phil it was easy for him to arrive. 

The three stand by the entrance in silence for a while. Tommy hums a song he doesn’t quite remember the name of alongside his friends.

There’s a buzz from Tubbo’s pocket, and the teen takes the moment to pull out his phone and check it. 

“Wilbur’s on his way back. He says he’s starting the ‘plan’ with just us because the other people he contacted are down in London, and he wants it sooner rather than later.”

“Do we even know what this ‘plan’ is?” Jack questions. 

Phil shrugs, “Only that it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Wilbur practically runs into the building fifteen minutes later with two shopping bags of what is lovingly labeled “party supplies.” 

He gives Phil, Tubbo, and Jack each their own two cans of silly string before shaking up two of his own. 

“So, big man, what exactly is the idea here?” Tubbo worries. 

“You are the plan. I hadn’t really thought beyond us going up to the ICU and making a ruckus.”

Tubbo and Phil share a glance, but Jack is quick to pipe up.“Good thing making a ruckus is one of my favorite things to do.” 

Kristin re-joins for the “hilarity” that will be watching her husband and his teenage friends spray silly string at each other outside the ICU so that Wilbur can sneak in during the diversion. She had previously been comforting Tubbo’s mum, who by the way she cried, you would think it was her friend up in the ICU, not her son’s. She had said to Kristin that she had been trying to keep it together, but it was heartbreaking to hear all of this tragic news.

The gang of Minecraft misfits stops in front of the elevator, waiting endlessly for one empty enough to ferry them up as a group. Tommy decides that he wants to be there to greet them inside the ICU, so he hurriedly scrambles up the staircase.

Tommy’s consciousness had been gone from the ICU for practically two hours, and a lot has changed. There is a new patient in one of the empty beds, a middle-aged man whose face looks like one of those surrealist paintings: half of it looks normal, handsome even, the other half is a mess of blood, gauze, and stitching like someone just blew it off. Maybe a gunshot wound. In this part of the rural woods, they get plenty of hunting accidents. One of the other patients, one who was so swaddled in gauze and bandages that Tommy couldn’t see if he/she was a man or woman, is gone. In their place is a woman whose neck is immobilized in one of those collar things.

As for Tommy, he’d since been weaned off his ventilator. He quickly remembers something about this being a positive step. Tommy stops short to check if he feels any different, but he’s sad to discover he still doesn’t feel anything, not physically anyhow. He hasn't since he was in the car this morning, listening to Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no. 3. 

Now that Tommy is breathing independently, his personal wall of machines bleeps far less, so Tommy’s body gets fewer visits from the nurses. Nurse Ramirez, the one with the nails, looks over at him every now and again, but she’s busy with the new guy with the half face.

Tommy hears his friends before he sees them. Philza is yelling something incoherent behind the glass walls, but Tommy recognizes him anywhere. 

Tommy wanders up to the front of the ICU to observe the chaos. 

Jack shakes up a blue can and begins swirling it around the palm of his hand. Once there’s a decent-sized dollop, he throws it at Tubbo’s face. Tubbo shakes up a yellow can and sprays it directly at Jack’s chest in reply. It’s slow at first, nobody wanting to get into genuine trouble or be anything more than a light-hearted distraction, but things kick up.

Kristin double-wields a red and a green can of foam string and dances in a circle. Phil sprays his pink can all over her hair, while Tubbo makes a mustache for himself with a can of orange.

Wilbur plays, too, but his gaze is trained, waiting for the door to open so he can seize his moment.

Tommy’s watching it all play out, like a movie on the screen. He stands next to his own bed, eyes trained on the double doors, waiting for them to open. Tommy is itching with suspense.

Nurses look on with innocent curiosity. It starts out as just some dumb kids doing dumb things. It’s the older, honestly, quite a killjoy nurse who takes her opportunity to scold.

“What’s going on?” the older nurse demands. Suddenly every nurse on the floor is looking at her, not out toward the chaotic silly-string brigade anymore. The joyous and fun moment in a sea of somber attitudes has broken. Tommy can practically feel the tension ease into disappointment. The door isn’t going to open.

Everyone stops and pales in fear. This nurse has such a commanding presence. 

“Somebody call security now,” the nurse growls.

“Wilbur, you better just go for it,” Jack calls out. “Now or never. Full-court press.”

“Go!” screams Phil, suddenly an army general overcome with the tensity of the situation. “We’ll cover you.”

The door opens. In tumble the strangest band of twitch misfits to play out the infamous “they can’t catch all of us” strategy. 

As Wilbur and Tubbo charge through the door, they both look determined, happy even. Tommy is amazed by their resilience, by their hidden pockets of strength. He wants nothing more than to jump up and down and root for them like it’s some school football match, and Tommy is too cold to do anything but stand and holler. It’s hard to believe, but watching his friends in action, Tommy almost feels happy, too.

“Where is he?” Wilbur pants. “Where’s Tommy?”

“In the corner, next to the supply closet!” someone shouts. It takes Tommy a minute to realize it’s Nurse Ramirez.

“Security! Get him! Get him!” the grumpy nurse shouts. She has spotted Wilbur through all the other invaders, and her face has gone pink with anger. Two hospital security guards and two orderlies run inside. They’re clearly confused from the sheer oddity that this is, but the commanding nurse clearly has an influence over them, too. 

It’s Kristin that first spots Tommy. “Wilbur, he’s here!” she screams and then turns to look at me, the scream dying in her throat. “He’s here,” she says again, only this time it’s a whimper.

  
  


Wilbur hears her, and he is dodging nurses and making his way to Tommy. And then he’s there at the foot of the bed, his hand reaching out to touch. Tommy didn’t realize it, but he’s been waiting for this moment. He prays to whatever god to let him have this moment as something finally familiar is almost here.

Almost. But suddenly, Wilbur’s moving away from Tommy. Two guards have Wilbur by the shoulders and have yanked him back. One of the same guards grabs Kristin’s elbow and leads her out. She’s limp now, offering no resistance. Tommy doesn’t notice, but these guards lead everyone out.

“Call the police,” the old nurse yells. “Have all these hooligans arrested.”

“We’re taking him down to security. That’s protocol,” one guard says.

“Not up to us to arrest,” the other adds.

“Just get him off my ward.” She harrumphs and turns around. “Miss Ramirez, that had better not have been you abetting these hoodlums.”

“Of course not. I was in the supply closet. I missed all the hubbub,” she replies. 

She’s such a good liar that her face gives nothing away.

The old nurse claps her hands. “Okay. Show’s over. Back to work.”

Tommy chasse after everyone, who are all being led into the elevators. He jumps in with them. Tubbo looks dazed, like someone flipped her reset button, and she’s still booting up. Wilbur’s lips are set in a grim line. Tommy can’t tell if Wilbur is about to cry or about to punch the guard. For Wilbur’s sake, Tommy hopes it’s the former. For Tommy’s own, he hopes for the latter.

Downstairs, the guards hustle the group toward a hallway filled with darkened offices. They’re about to go inside one of the few offices with lights on when I hear someone scream Wilbur’s name.

“Wilbur. Stop. Is that you?”

“Ms. Susan? Mrs. Smith?” Wilbur yells.

“Mum?” Tubbo mumbles.

“Excuse me, where are you taking them?” Aunt Susan yells at the guards as she runs toward them.

“I’m sorry, but these two were caught trying to break into the ICU,” one guard explains.

“Only because they wouldn’t let us in,” Wilbur explains weakly.

Tubbo’s mum must have found Tommy’s family and told the group off, and Tommy’s aunt looks right pissed. Aunt Susan has a presence, not unlike the nurse upstairs, and it is visible among the guards and the friends alike. 

“I’m one phone click away to the director of community affairs. Mr. Caruthers is a friend of my husband’s. I doubt he’d be pleased if I were to call him now and tell him how his hospital was treating someone trying to visit his critically wounded best friend. You know that the director values compassion as much as efficiency, and this is not the way to treat a concerned loved one to some kids.”

“We’re just doing our job, ma’am. Following orders.”

“How about I save you two the trouble and take it from here. The patient’s family is all assembled upstairs. We’re waiting for these five to join us. Here, if you have any problems, you tell Mr. Caruthers to get in touch with me.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a card, and hands it over. One of the guards looks at it, hands it to the other, who stares at it and shrugs.

“Might as well save ourselves the paperwork,” he says. He lets go of Wilbur, whose body slumps like a scarecrow taken off his pole. “Sorry, kid,” he says to Wilbur, brushing off his shoulders.

“I hope your friend’s okay,” the other mumbles. And then they disappear toward the glow of some vending machines.

Tubbo has never met Aunt Susan before, but he knows plenty of stories to know that she’s the hero for today. Tubbo feels so overwhelmed he scurries over to the lanky woman tapping her foot and envelops her in a bear hug. 

“Thank you, Ms. Susan.” He sniffles. 

Aunt Susan awkwardly stands there for a moment, unsure what to make of the situation. Eventually, she hugs Tubbo back, pats him on the shoulders before letting go. She rubs her eyes and winces out a brittle laugh. “What in the hell were you thinking, Wilbur? This isn’t the responsible adult I spoke to on the phone, surely.” she scolds.

“I just needed to see Tom,” Wilbur says, unable to muster any sort of elaborate excuse.

Susan turns to look at Wilbur, and it’s like someone has unscrewed her valve, letting all her air escape. She deflates. “Of course you do.” She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks.

The stoic aunt ignores the question. “Let’s see about getting you into Tom.”

Wilbur perks up when he hears this. “You think you can? That old nurse has it in for me.”

“If that old nurse is who I think she is, it doesn’t matter if she has it in for you. It’s not up to her. Let’s check in with the family and then I’ll find out who’s in charge of breaking the rules around here and get you in to see that kid. He’s going to need you now. More than ever.”

Tommy follows as the room is filled with more people than ever. Aunt Susan kisses Uncle David on the cheek as she ushers the friends inside. Immediately, they’re overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Tommy’s family. All of Tommy’s aunts are there, now, sat bickering as always, and there are more cousins, too. It’s like some morbid impromptu family reunion. 

Tommy feels so glad to see everyone that the implication takes a few moments to sink in. He’s so overcome with relief that his twitch family can meet his real family; he doesn’t think for a moment what this all means. 

When it does hit, it’s like a jolt of electricity.

Tommy looks around. Everyone is chatting like nothing is wrong, but their eyes look like they’ve been vacuumed of all joy. 

Everyone talks about Tommy and Tommy only. Tommy recalls that some of his family had been put on “Anne-watch” and had been at the other hospital hoping for her. If they’re all here now, it means there would be no reason to be at the other hospital. It wouldn’t be fair for everyone to worry about only Tommy unless there was only Tommy to worry about.

Tommy thinks about Aunt Susan’s words, about needing friends now. More than ever. 

And that’s how he knows it. Mum. She’s gone, too. 


	22. 10:39 PM CET

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fundy watches Treasure Planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (not at all canon to any real-life people that I'm aware of, this chap is just me venting about the strangeness of grief and loss I suppose, and is "filler" between two of my biggest chapters. have fun!)

There’s a soul-crushing feeling that occurs the moment you hear about someone you love passing away. The denial and guilt and anger and sadness come later, but the first thing you always feel is the sinking and twisting indescribable pain. If you’ve never lost someone like that, it’s impossible to know. 

Fundy remembers the day his own mum passed away. Not Sally the Salmon, a made-up character, but when his own mum had cancer when he was all of five. There are things about her he can’t seem to remember no matter how hard he tries. He’s had a stepmom for so long that sometimes he confuses the attributes of the two. His stepmom smells of lemons and cleaning supplies, but he can’t seem to remember what his own mom smelled like. 

Maybe that’s why he’s taking Tommy’s coma so hard. The thought of losing someone else like that is weighing deep on his soul. 

He doesn’t know yet that Tommy’s just beginning to grapple with his own mom being dead. It’s so different from Tommy’s situation. Tommy remembers his mom so clearly. Fundy can’t tell if he remembers real things or stories he’s been told about his mom. Tommy can still feel her hugs linger on his ghost form if he tries hard enough. 

It’s been sixteen years since Fundy’s seen his real mom. That’s as long as Tommy has been alive. If Tommy survives this, they can start a dead mom squad. But Fundy is riddled with the fear that his friend will not. Last he heard, Tommy’s swelling had not gone down, and he was still being held in the comatose state. 

“I need to do something to think about anything other than sadness right now.” Quackity had messaged. “So if anyone’s down for watching a movie on discord, I’ll stream whatever the hell you want.”

That had been an hour ago. Now, Fundy sat blankly blinking at Treasure Planet on his screen. He had said it mostly for the memes of it being the movie he coded into Minecraft to watch with Dream, but it was genuinely a movie he enjoyed. 

Usually, when watching a good movie with good friends, there's joy and giggling and weird commentary made through whispers and the crunching of snacks and rustling of papers, but the call is silent. People breathe into the mics every once and a while, but nobody is really saying anything. 

It’s like the whole call is holding their breath for a notice on Tommy. Their enjoyment of the movie hangs in the balance. 

Treasure Planet may, in hindsight, not have been the best movie to lift spirits. They’re now at the part where a black hole kills the ship captain, and any mention of death in the slightest puts this group on edge. 

Because, to them, there’s a black hole of grief building worrying about their friend beeping rhythmically alone in some stuffy hospital room. And their worst fear at this moment is an impending death—the death of Tommy. 

And Tommy’s worst fear has just been realized. His mum is gone, and he has no comfort in hugging his family or friends because he’s in some sort of hell-limbo. 

And that black hole is ready to eat up everyone in its path. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of feelings about the recent lore, and I might write about them. I write angst and grief a lot anyways, so I want to provide you all with more.


	23. 9:42 PM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy grapples with the new information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this whole book hits different after the 3/1 streams. Sorry about that, fellas. Anyways, back into my writing hole I go. When I will emerge? Who's to say. Could be in a few hours, could be another week. ;D

Tommy runs away.

He leaves Tubbo, Phil, Wilbur, and everyone else in the lobby, and he just starts careening through the hospital. 

Tommy can’t help but picture her hair, the choppy messy blond curls. He loves to nuzzle his face in those curls, has since he was a baby. As he got older, it was something he’d do less and less. Dependency on your mother was not something teenage boys liked to flaunt. There would be nights when Tommy was sad or tired where he’d sit on the couch with Mum and breathe in her apple-scented shampoo and feel comfort like no other. 

Now, there is no more. It’s over. 

He pictures himself nuzzling mum’s head one last time, and he can’t even imagine it without seeing himself crying, tears turning blond curlicues straight.

Tommy races through the hospital like a trapped wild animal. “Mum?” he calls, “Where are you? Come back to me.”

She doesn’t. Tommy knows it’s fruitless. He gives up drags himself back to his ICU, overwhelmed with an urge to break down the double doors. He wants to smash the nurses’ station. Tommy just wants it all to go away. He wants to go away. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. Not in this hospital. Not in this suspended state where he can see what’s happening, where he’s aware of what he’s feeling without being able to actually feel it. He cannot scream until his throat hurts or break a window with his fist until his hand bleeds, or pull his hair out in clumps until in the pain in his scalp overcomes the one in his heart. 

Tommy stares at himself, at the “live” Tommy now, lying in his hospital bed. He feels a burst of fury. If he could slap his own lifeless face, he would. 

Instead, he sits down in the chair and closes his eyes, wishing it all away. Except he can’t. He can’t concentrate because there’s suddenly so much noise. His monitors are flipping, and chirping and two nurses are racing towards him. 

“His BP and pulse ox are dropping,” one yells.

“He’s tachycardic,” the other yells. “What happened?”

“Code blue, code blue in Trauma,” blares the speaker system. 

Soon, the nurses are joined by a bleary-eyed doctor, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, which are ringed by deep circles. He yanks down the covers and lifts Tommy’s hospital gown. 

The doctor puts a hand on Tommy’s belly, which is swollen and hard. His eyes widen and then narrow into slits. “Abdomen’s rigid,” he says angrily. “We need to do an ultrasound.”

Nurse Ramirez runs to a back room and then wheels out what looks like a portable laptop with a long white attachment. She squirts jelly on Tommy’s stomach, and the doctor runs the attachment over Tommy. 

“Damn. Full of fluid,” he says. “Patient had surgery this afternoon?”

“A splenectomy,” Nurse Ramirez replies. 

“Could be a missed blood vessel that wasn’t cauterized,” the doctor says. “Or a slow leak from a perforated bowel. Car accident, right?”

“Yes. Patient was Medevaced this morning.”

The doctor flips through Tommy’s chart. “Doctor Sorensen was his surgeon. He’s still on call. Page him, then get the kid to the OR. We need to get inside and find out what’s leaking and why before he drips any further. Jesus, brain contusion, collapsed lung. This kid’s a train wreck.”

Nurse Ramirez shoots the doctor a dirty look as if he had just personally insulted Tommy. 

“Miss Ramirez,” the grumpy nurse at the desk scolds. “You have patients of your own to deal with. Let’s get this young man intubated and transferred to the OR. That will do him more good than all this dilly-dallying around!”

The nurses work rapidly to detach the monitors and catheters and run another tube down the throat of the lifeless Tommy. A pair of orderlies rush in with a gurney and heave him onto it. And then Tommy’s gone into the maze of hallways leading toward the OR for another round of cutting, but this time Tommy doesn’t follow himself. This time Tommy’s ghost decides to stay behind in the ICU.

Tommy thinks he’s starting to get it now. Not totally, fully, understand. It’s not like somehow he’s commanded a blood vessel to pop open and start leaking into his stomach. It’s not like he wished for another surgery. But Mum and Dad are gone now. This morning, Tommy went for a drive with his family. And now, he is here, as alone as he’s ever been. And he’s just shy of seventeen years old. This is not how it’s supposed to be. This was not how his life was supposed to turn out. 

In the quiet corner of the ICU, Tommy starts to really think about the biter things he’d managed to ignore so far. What would it be like? What would it feel like to wake up an orphan? To never smell dad smoke a pipe? To never stand next to mum quietly talking as they do the dishes? Never have they interrupt a stream to remind him to get something to drink? To stay without them?

Tommy doesn’t know if this is a world he belongs to anymore. He doesn’t know if he wants to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouch. This one hurt particularly hard. 
> 
> As always, comments, kudos, stinky little messages over on the discord, everything is very appreciated. The discord is kind of getting pretty big now so I might be asking for some mods soon, but for now, it's just running off straight vibes. I actually have the next few chapters mostly pre-written, so they might not be too long for a hiatus. I'm really wacky with uploading though, so we shall see. ;3 <3


	24. 2:40 PM PST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Techno goes on twitter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> carlbot made me do this.

To say Techno had been worrying all day was perhaps the understatement of the year. He’d heard about Tommy being in the hospital and jumped in and out of the emotional support group discord call. He’d like his information from Phil and Phil alone; all the fluffy words of hope from everybody else just didn’t feel right. 

Because Techno was smart, he went to college, at least for a little bit. He understood that Tommy was not in good condition. Broken bones in every direction, punctured lung, everything wrong with Tommy’s brain. And that’s just the physical trauma if the emotional trauma wasn’t enough.

If Tommy were even to wake up, he would not be the same, Tommy. 

A ping from Phil jolts Techno from his position on the couch mindlessly watching a rerun of some cartoon he’d already seen. 

_ Tommy’s back in surgery. Just after we all got kicked out for the silly string shit, someone came in and told us they had to bring Tommy back up.  _

Techno didn’t even realize he’d gone and pushed the call button on discord until Phil answered. 

“Hey mate,” Phil defeated. 

“Tell me everything you know.” Techno huffs. 

“It isn’t much. The doctors aren’t sure what’s going on, but he was having some sort of internal leak or something, and it was urgent they fixed it. Jack went back up to get his wallet, something about dropping in during the commotion, and he said he saw them wheeling Tommy to an elevator.”

Phil trembles a bit on the other end of the call, “There was a code blue; he was crashing. Jack says there was someone on top of Tommy giving him CPR. He was  _ dying _ Techno. Like  _ really dying _ .”

Techno’s face feels warm and wet. He brings his hand to it and sniffs everything back in, a meager attempt to deny emotion. 

  
  


“How’s Jack handling that? Seems traumatic?”

“He’s doing okay, actually. I have been chatting to some of Tommy’s aunts. Apparently, they’re from the same area. Tubbo’s mum is taking him back to their hotel. The poor kid’s his own wreck. He cried the whole way out the door. She said to give updates straight to her.”

“Wilbur?”

Phil hesitates, “Will’s catatonic, mate. He’s been staring at the wall for minutes, only moving by blinking and breathing.”

There’s something muffled before Phil speaks again, “I’m really worried about him. You know how he was before we all really knew him. I know he’s getting help, and he’s not in that place anymore, but I really don’t want this to send him back to that. I can’t lose two of my friends.”

Techno remembers Wilbur’s past like he was there to witness it, despite everything being just anecdotes from Wil and his friends. Will has meds now, help him manage his depression so he doesn’t do anything stupid that will wind him up in A&E like he had not all that long before he was doing YouTube. Will had been in a psych ward. Something Techno had never heard Wilbur actually mention but had heard from other people. Wilbur always got tense talking about that kind of stuff. 

Tommy was only sixteen, but he always knew what to say to make Wilbur feel calmer. He’d coax Will to play games with them and get him out of bed, out of his depression cycle. Techno knew what it was like, of course, to live with mental illness. He dealt with it himself, but there was something special about Tommy and Wilbur’s interactions. Tommy always put on such a brash persona, but he was so gentle with his friends. 

“Have you seen Twitter?” Techno asks, switching his thought about Wilbur spiraling quickly, not sure he could dwell on that without breaking.

“No, it’s been kind of busy over here with the whole surgery thing and getting kicked from the ICU business, haven’t had the chance.”

Techno scrolls through his phone lit up with concerned messages over the hours about how so many streamers just went dark all of a sudden. Tubbo had apparently ended his JackBox stream very abruptly when he heard about Tommy, muttering about something important, and he had to go. Quackity had tweeted that he wasn’t going to stream like he was planning to do. He had a scheduled stream in a few hours, but he’d canceled it, saying he had to deal with something in his personal life. 

When Tommy hadn’t shown up to stream, the friends were all saying he would join soon, and he was just running late. Then, all at once, everyone seemed to be going AWOL as Tommy had, and the fans were concerned. 

“They’re all worried, Phil. The viewers. Tubbo’s stream got cut really abruptly, and people are worried. Mix that with your ending stream saying without saying why just muting yourself and then saying you needed to go and Quackity canceling his stream, the whole Internet is bustling with conspiracy theories.”

Phil hums, “I suppose someone has to say something. We can’t make them worry like that. It’s not fair.”

After drafting a tweet with Techno still on call, Phil released a quick thing and asked the friends to do something similar so that people knew the bare minimum of what was happening. 

_ Stream had to end early today because a very good friend needs some “get well” wishes tonight. It’s not my place to say anything else but stay safe, everyone. _

Techno’s just retweeted Phil, not wanting to write something when he wasn’t even streaming or anything all day. The replies were mostly “sending hugs and prayers” and normal things, but when too many people started saying similar posts, people realized this friend was likely all the same person, and this was not coincidental.

When Tommy, usually so active on Twitter, was making no replies and no response, someone connected the dots. 

Twitter was flooded by people wondering what was wrong with Tommy, and Techno felt like they’d taken one step forward and then eight steps back. 

He put his phone face down when Phil called him next. He wasn’t prepared for this shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have the next chapter already written, so it will be out when I feel like it. It's kind of long, as many of the next chapters will be, and I have to write the "grandpa scene" for my source material friends and I am not emotionally stable enough for this shit.


	25. 1:48 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy re-evaluates his situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The new longest chapter for this book! Enjoy!

Tommy’s back where he started. Back in the ICU. His body that is. The consciousness of Tommy had been sitting there all along, too tired to move. 

All Tommy wants right now is to go to sleep. If only there was some sort of anesthesia for a ghost or at least something to make the world shut up. He wants to be like his body, quiet and lifeless, putty in someone else’s hands. He doesn’t have enough energy for this decision. Tommy doesn’t want this anymore. 

He says it out loud, “I don’t want this.”

Tommy looks around the ICU, feeling kind of ridiculous. He doubts all the other messed-up people in the ward are exactly thrilled to be there, either. 

His body wasn’t gone all that long, a few hours for surgery and a little longer in the recovery room. Tommy still doesn’t know what’s happened to him, and for the first time that day, he doesn’t particularly care. He shouldn’t have to care. He shouldn’t have to work this hard. 

He remembers watching Hamilton upon Wilbur’s request over the summer. Wilbur was practically boiling with anticipation to overanalyze it for Tommy and had gone into detail about every line in the show. “Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder” didn’t seem particularly striking at the time, but Tommy has learned the cold truth in those words. It feels like something more now.

Tommy’s back on the ventilator, and once again, there’s tape over his eyes. He still doesn’t understand the tape.  _ Are the doctors afraid he’ll wake up mid-surgery and be horrified by the scalpels or blood? _ As if those things would faze him now. 

Two nurses, the one assigned to him and Nurse Ramirez, come over to his bed and check all of Tommy’s monitors. They call out a chorus of numbers that are as familiar to me now as my own name: BP, pulse ox, respiratory rate. Nurse Ramirez looks like an entirely different person from the one who arrived yesterday afternoon. The makeup has all rubbed off, and her hair is flat. She looks like she could sleep standing up. Her shift must be over soon. Tommy admits silently that he’ll miss her, but he’s glad she’ll be able to get away from this place, from everything, from Tommy. Tommy wishes that he could get away, too. 

He thinks he will. It’s just a matter of time- he thinks. A matter of figuring out how to let go. 

Tommy’s body hadn’t been back in the ICU fifteen minutes when Aunt Susan shows up. She marches through the double doors and goes to speak to the one nurse behind the desk. Tommy can’t hear what she says, but he notes her tone: it’s polite, soft-spoken, but leaving no room for questions. When she leaves the room a few minutes later, there’s a change in the air. Susan’s in charge now. The grumpy nurse at first looks pissed off, like, “Who is this woman to tell me what to do? But then she seems to resign, to throw her hands up in surrender. 

It’s been a crazy night. The shift is almost over. Why bother? Soon, Tommy and all of his noisy, pushy visitors will be somebody else’s problem.

Five minutes later, Susan is back, Nanainnit in tow. Aunt Susan hasn’t slept in more than eight hours in the past few days, night shifts on call for the babies in her ward, and now dealing with a critical condition nephew meant she was exhausted, but she refused to look it. Tommy knows she doesn’t get enough sleep on a good day. Babies at work, noisy dogs at home, an annoying abundance of family members at every turn can do that to a person.

Nana, despite a similar lack of sleep, still looks like a regular Gran. She tiptoes her way to Tommy’s bed, almost like she’s afraid a long step would wake him up like a sleeping toddler. It’s odd because all anyone has wanted all day is for Tommy to wake up. 

Nana cranes herself over Tommy’s bedside, cupping the only part of his cheek not masked with wires. She tuts her tongue in some manner of sympathy. 

“You’ve sure got us on a roller-coaster ride today,” Nana says lightly. “Your mum always said she couldn’t believe what an easy boy you were. I remember telling her, ‘Just you wait until he hits puberty.’ But you proved me wrong. Even then, you were such a breeze. Never gave us any trouble. Never the kind of boy to make my heart race in fear.”

Nana runs her thumb along the line of Tommy’s cheek, “You made up for a lifetime of that today.”

Aunt Susan elbows her mum from the back, where she solemnly stood like a gargoyle protecting all of this. 

“Oh, hush, Susie. He’d appreciated that. Tom’s got a good sense of humor. That’s what makes all those internet people like him so much, no doubt. That good humor missed a generation with you girls, always so serious all of you.”

Susan doesn’t argue, but she wiggles her nose as if holding in a protest like a sneeze. 

Nana quietly pulls the chair up next to Tommy’s bed and starts combing his hair with her fingers. Someone must have rinsed it at one point because, while it’s not exactly clean, it’s not caked with blood like it had been when he arrived. Tommy inherited the same blonde curls from his mum and grandmum, though Nana had always been grey as long as Tommy could remember. Nana twisted a curl in her finger on Tommy’s head and moved it to behind his ear. 

“Your hair is practically longer than mine now, Tom,” she says. “I met your lovely friends today. Not just Freddie and those boys from around here, but them lot from all over. The internet ones can’t remember all their names. One of them, bless him, has a little bee plush he brought to show you. Your mum, when she was just a little one, would always attract the bees in the garden. I don’t know what Annie was doing, but they all would sting her the minute she stepped out there. It wasn’t gentle enough, I suppose. Poor girl got so scared of bees. Annie much preferred the dragonflies in the garden. You can find the little creatures on every continent. She had something about those dragonflies. She called them her friends, would name them in the garden, and talk to them. She’d swear they talked back. Annie had the best imagination out of all those girls. She’d repeat the stories these dragonflies would tell her about their plan to destroy the bees who wronged her. It was sweet, I guess. She always was so creative. That’s where you get it, what with your television show on the internet and those films you make. You two are just two peas in a pod.”

Nana continues updating about the lives of every single person in that waiting room, and Tommy listens to her voice and tries to pretend he’s just on her couch with a tiny teacup like they were supposed to be that morning. He wants to be carried away by her happy babble. Sometimes, he could almost fall asleep while sitting on a stool in her kitchen listening to her, and he wondered if he could do that here today. 

Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. Tommy heard in movies and places about the sleep of the dead.  _ Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? _ If that were what it was, Tommy wouldn’t mind that at all. 

Tommy manages to jerk himself up, panic destroying whatever calm listening Nan had to offer. He’s not entirely clear on the particulars here, but he does know that once he’d fully committed to going, he will. 

Tommy’s not ready. Not yet. He doesn’t know why, but he’s not. He’s a little scared that if he accidentally thinks  _ I wouldn’t mind an endless nap _ , it would happen and be irreversible, like the way his dad would tease that if he made a funny face as the clock struck noon, it would remain like that forever. 

He wonders if every dying person gets to decide whether they stay or go like this. It seems unlikely. After all, this hospital is full of people having poisonous chemicals pumped into their veins or submitting to horrible operations, all so they can stay, but some of them will die anyway. 

_Did Mum and Dad decide?_ Tommy ponders. It hardly seems like there would have been a time for Dad to make such a momentous decision, and he can’t imagine Dad would choose to leave him and his mum behind. Did his mum want to go with Dad, with her own dad? Surely she wouldn’t have wanted to without Tommy, but maybe she didn’t know he was still here. He shakes the thought because he knows his parents wouldn’t leave unless they were forced to. He knows they love him. Then why did he get stuck making this impossible decision? 

He wished someone would just do it for him. If there was a way to hire an editor to just edit the state he was in and make him go to his parents, he’d pay them in a heartbeat. Can’t there be a tutorial mode to make sure he makes the right choice?

Aunt Susan ushers out Nana, something about letting other people get a turn. Nan shakes her head and asks for a few minutes alone with Tommy. She’s silent for a while, smoothing the blankets and curling Tommy’s hair. It takes a moment for Ghostinnit to realize that Nan is crying. She’s not making any noise, but tears are cascading down her cheeks, wetting her entire face. Tommy has never seen anyone cry like this. Quiet but gushing, a faucet behind the eyes mysteriously turned on. 

The tears fall down to where Tommy’s body is directly below her, onto his freshly combed hair. Plink. Plink. Plink. 

Nan doesn’t wipe her face or blow her nose. She just lets the tears fall where they may. And when the well of grief is momentarily dry, she leans down and kisses Tommy on the forehead. 

She looks like she’s about to leave as she’d only asked for the moment so she could cry without her daughter there to see, but Nan doubles back to Tommy’s bedside, bends down, so her face is level with his ear, and whispers into it. 

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.” Her voice cracks with emotion. She stops, takes a breath, and continues, “But I know that’s what I want, and I can see why it might not be what you want. This kind of loss, I don’t think I could handle it if I was your age. You much stronger than me, though, so I don’t doubt you could. But if it’s too much, I understand. If you need to leave us, I don’t want you to feel guilty. If you need to stop fighting, I’ll understand, Thomas. You have to do what you have to do, right?”

For the first time, Tommy feels something unclench. He feels himself breathe. Tommy knows that Nan can’t just do it for him. She won’t unplug his breathing tubes or overdose him with morphine or anything like that. But it’s the first time that anyone really acknowledged the gravity of what Tommy had lost. He knows the social worker had warned the family not to upset him, but Nan’s recognition and the permission- it feels like a gift. 

Nana doesn’t leave. She slumps back into the chair. It’s quiet now. So quiet that you can almost hear other people’s dreams. So quiet that you can almost tell Tommy tell Nan, “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This just destroyed me to write. NGL this Nanainnit in my little world has my heart I just fell in love with someone I made up in my brain rot crack-turned-serious someone send help lmaoo.


	26. 10:13 PM EST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ranboo gives some advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't know Ranboo's actual timezone/actual age, we've made him 17 in Eastern Standard Time for convenience to there you go.

Ranboo taps his pencil against the rim of his desk subconsciously. He was new to the waiting game everyone was playing with Tommy’s life. Ranboo returned from his in-person school day to panic, chiming his phone. Catching up reading everything on the ride home made him carsick. 

Of course, that was hours ago.

Since then, Tommy had another terrifying brush with death and another excruciatingly long surgery that left the whole group chat biting their nails in worry that someone was going to text saying Tommy hadn’t made it. 

To Ranboo’s delight, that was not the case. Tommy was still alive, and over in the UK, it was a new day. But, still, Tommy wasn’t awake. 

  
  


_ Tommy’s aunt is taking people in to see him one at a time. Once the family’s gone in, we’ll go. I’ll join VC if you all have things you need to say. The doctor was concerned we might have to be saying our goodbyes; his surgery went well, but he’s so weak another problem like that, and they wouldn’t be able to restart his heart.  _

Ranboo didn’t have much experience with death. In his seventeen, nearly eighteen years of life, he’d only been to some distant great aunt’s funeral and a memorial for his pet fish. He wasn’t used to this sucker punch to the gut Phil’s message would bring him. 

Optimists of the chat say that Tommy won’t have another problem, that he’s in the healing process now. It’s hard to keep that hope when they had been fed it all afternoon only for it to crash down. Tommy had been taken off the ventilator, he was breathing on his own, and his vitals were improving, and then all of a sudden, they weren’t. 

Ranboo messages Tubbo. He knows from Phil that Tubbo went to his hotel after Tommy went into surgery, so he wasn’t expecting a call response. 

“Hey,” Tubbo’s weak voice whispers. 

“Why are we whispering?” Ranboo matches the tone. 

“My mum is asleep; I’m sat in the dry bathtub talking to you,” Tubbo admits. 

Ranboo replies, “You should probably go to sleep too.”

Tubbo hums in a light agreement, “I can’t sleep. I just see the picture in my mind of Tommy in that ICU bed, just before they took us away.”

“What was he like?” Ranboo isn’t sure he wants to know, but curiosity grips at him. 

Tubbo thinks for a moment, finding the right words to describe it, “Ranboo, it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. They had him hooked to these wires, and he was so still. Tommy’s never still. There were bandages all over him, and he looked like an extra on a Zombie movie set.”

“He’ll be okay, though,” Ranboo coaxes. He’s admitting this to Tubbo and to himself. 

“We don’t know that.”

“He will because I really don’t want our first meetup to be Tommy’s funeral. I feel like it’d be a bad setup to the friendship.”

Tubbo giggles something soft, “It’d be straight out of some 80’s rom-com, though, wouldn’t it?” Tubbo lowers his voice to be like a movie announcer, “two friends separated by sea quite literally bump into each other. At a funeral? I drop my flowers, and you’ll pick them up. ‘I think you dropped these,’ you’ll say. ‘Thanks,’ I’ll say, but I’m blushing now, and the guitar music starts playing as the wind blows through my hair. It’ll be so romantic.”

Ranboo laughs back, “Truly the most romantic thing you could think of, eh?”

They both laugh into their phones, and everything feels normal. 

“We’re so fucked for laughing about this,” Tubbo snorts through. 

Ranboo goes more serious, “If this is how you cope, dude, then it’s okay. You don’t need to feel invalidated if this is what you need.” 

Tubbo goes quiet, “I just feel bad about how I don’t really feel anything, you know?”

Ranboo nods, “Yeah.”

“It’s just until I saw him it didn’t feel real, and I cried, but I felt so bad about it because his whole family was like ‘who is this kid and why is he like this?’ but I-I just feel like I was making it about me by having that reaction, everyone was trying to comfort me. It’s not about me; I shouldn’t be like this. I didn’t want to just come to Tommy to be a burden on everyone else.” Tubbo cries.

“You’re not a burden,” Ranboo reassures, “and you have every right to cry. I’m sure his family wouldn’t be offended by that, and if they were, then you did a good job by leaving the situation.”

“Get some sleep, maybe, and go visit in the morning. He’ll be in better condition, surely, and you will be, too.” Ranboo concludes. 

“You can’t say that. What if he isn’t?” Tubbo whines. 

“Then you’ll deal with that tomorrow. You need to sleep. I know it will be hard, but your body can’t suffer because Tommy’s is. He has people to take care of him, so you need to do me a favor and take care of you.”

“How’d you get so wise?” Tubbo asks.

“Probably the brain rot from years of videogames,” Ranboo jokes. 

“Seriously, you’re really comforting, Ranboo. No joke, thanks.”

“No joke, you’re welcome. Now no joke, go to bed.”

Tubbo giggles a bit into the phone, “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to take care of you! Ranboo said so, so now you have to. That's the law.


	27. 3:57 AM GMT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy finally sees Wilbur, but he isn't sure he wants to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter diverged a lot from the source-material one this is based on. There was a lot of "romance" that I tried to cut out, and now you're left with some angsty Granddad stuff so be grateful.

Tommy doesn’t remember much about his mum’s dad, his Grandpa, but there are flashes that come back to him every so often. Nan’s husband had died when Tommy was just nearing ten. Grandpa played the piano and tried to teach Tommy. Tommy was never any good. 

When Grandpa was sick, Tommy went to visit. His mum made the family pick out flowers to bring to his grandparents’ house, and Tommy chose the ones with the most colours. 

Tommy sat with Granddad and chatted as though he wasn't ill. Granddad would nod on occasion, and Tommy would try anything to get a laugh from the man. Nan would come in to check on Granddad, but he would push her away and tell her this was a private meeting. 

“Tom, come closer here.” Granddad beckoned. Tommy climbed to the side of his grandparents’ squeaky wooden bedframe before jumping to the soft mattress and curling close to the bigger man.

“You’re a big boy, aren’t you?”

Tommy nodded into Granddad’s shoulder. 

“You know why I can’t go outside to play with you, then?”

“You’re sick, Granddad,” Tommy had replied, “And we’re here so that you can get well soon and come play next time.”

“Tom, I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be brave,” Granddad had sighed as he pets Tommy’s curls. 

“I won’t be going out to play anymore.”

“You don’t want to play with me, Granddad?” Tommy had whined.

“Of course I want to—more than anything. But sometimes, when people are really sick, they run out of fight. I’d choose to play, but it’s too hard for me. When people are really sick, and they run out of fight, there isn’t much left. You understand?”

Tom hadn’t understood what Granddad had meant when he was younger. Though he pretended he did at that moment. Granddad had died only a few months later, and those conversations seemed to slip further and further from Tommy’s mind. Now, that particular one was back in full-force. He could practically smell the springtime on the flowers, even from nearly seven years in the future. 

Tommy felt like he was running out of fight. He’d never felt so emotionally exhausted before, like choosing to stay in this “in-between” realm was using every ounce of power he had. He would love to stay and play, but it felt too hard to seriously consider that choice. 

It felt like granddad was speaking right into Tommy’s ear. Not then, as a ten-year-old, but now at sixteen. Granddad understood that it hurt for Tommy to stay, just like Nana understood. 

It felt almost like a hidden clue from the other side about what his Granddad and parents wanted him to do. 

Tommy tries to imagine his situation from their perspectives. He knows somewhere that they’d want to be with him, for everyone to be together again eventually. But Tommy doesn’t know what happens after people die. His family didn’t practice religion, so it felt weird to imagine a Christian Heaven of sorts. But he thinks that when he does die, he’ll be reunited with them whether he goes this morning or in seventy years. What do they want for him  _ now _ ?

As soon as he poses the question, Tommy can practically see his Mum’s pissed-off expression. She’d be livid with him for even contemplating anything but saying. Dad would be mad, too, that Tommy would throw away everything he’s worked for up to this point on a whim like this. But Granddad? Granddad understood the pain of dying slowly. Granddad knew he was on his deathbed for months before he went, and Granddad must have known about the anxiety of just wanting to get it over with. Maybe, like Nana, Granddad will understand why Tommy doesn’t think he can stay.

Tommy’s concentrating on the memory of Granddad playing the piano, trying hard to feel the sound of Debussy in something more than in a faint recollection. He taps his fingers against his thigh to mimic the keys: F to D, C and back to D, 

C then down to B. 

He’s so buried in the piano that he barely registers that Aunt Susan has returned to the ICU. He barely notices she’s talking to the grump nurse, barely recognizes the steely determination in her tone. 

Had Tommy been paying attention, he might have realized that Aunt Susan was lobbying for her new friend Wilbur to be able to visit. Had Tommy been paying attention, he might have somehow avoided the confrontation he knew would be painful. But Aunt Susan, as usual, was successful. 

Tommy doesn’t want to see Wilbur. Well, that’s not true. He does. He aches to see Wilbur. But Tommy knows that if he sees Wilbur, he’s going to lose the last wisp of peacefulness that Nana had given him when she told Tommy it was okay to go. 

Tommy tries to summon the courage to do what he has to do. Wilbur will complicate things. Tommy tries to stand up to get away, but something has happened to his ghost since his body went back into surgery. Tommy no longer has the strength to move. It takes all of his efforts just to sit upright in his chair. He can’t run away; all he can do is hide. Tommy curls his knees to his chest and closes his eyes. 

Tommy hears Nurse Ramirez talking to Aunt Susan. “I’ll take him over,” she says. And for once, the grumpy nurse doesn’t order her back to her own patients. 

“That was a pretty stupid move you pulled earlier,” Tommy can hear her tell Wilbur.

“I know,” Wilbur answers. His voice is a throaty whisper, the way it gets after a particularly scream-y recording for YouTube or Twitch. “I was desperate.”

“No, it was sweet,” she tells him. 

“I was absurd. They said he was doing better. He’d come off the ventilator. He was getting stronger. But after I came in here, Tommy got worse. They said his heart stopped on the operating table . . .” Wilbur trails off. 

“And they got it started. He had a perforated bowel that was slowly leaking bile into his abdomen, and it threw them organs all outta whack. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it had nothing to do with you. We caught it and fixed it, and that’s what matters.”

“But he was doing better,” Wilbur whispers. He sounds so young and vulnerable. “And then I came in, and he almost died.” His voice chokes into a sob. The sound of it wakes Tommy up like a bucket of ice water dropped down his shirt.  _ Wilbur thinks that he did this to me? No! That’s beyond crazy. He’s so wrong. _

“And I almost stayed in Puerto Rico to marry a fat son of a bitch,” the nurse snaps. “But I di'n't. And I have a different life now. Almost doesn’t matter. You got you deal with the situation at hand. And Tom’s still here.” She whips the privacy curtain around Tommy’s bed. 

“In you go,” she tells Wilbur.

Tommy forces his head up and eyes open. Wilbur. One of his best friends, his mentor for YouTube, and the man he’d looked up to for over a year. His eyes are dipping with fatigue. He’s sprouting stubble, something Tommy knows Wilbur would never intentionally do. He looms incredibly tall, making Nurse Ramirez look like a child in comparison. One of Nan’s home-knit scarves drapes over Wilburs shoulders, a splash of hopeful color in an otherwise messily put-together and dark outfit.

When Wilbur first sees Tommy, he blanches like Tommy’s some hideous Creature from the Black Lagoon. In all fairness, Tommy does look pretty bad. He’s hooked back up to the ventilator and a dozen other tubes, the dressing from his latest surgery seeping blood. But, after a moment, Wilbur exhales loudly, and he’s just Wil again. He searches around, like he’s dropped something, and then finds what he’s looking for: Tommy’s hand. The right one is like a beacon of something Tommy in an otherwise robotic and cold body. It’s at the knuckles, but it has no wires of blood and looks the most familiar of everything; in turn, that is what Wilbur focuses on. 

“Jesus, Tommy, your hands are freezing.” Wil squats down, takes Tommy’s right hand into his, and careful to not bump into and of Tommy’s tubes and wires, draws his chapped mouth to them, blowing warm air into the little shelter he’s created. 

Tommy wonders that, if he tied, if he could feel Wilbur touching him. If Tommy were to lie down on top of himself in the bed, would he become one with his body again? Would he feel him then? IF Tommy reaches out his ghostly hand to Wil’s, would he feel him? Would he warm the hands he cannot see?

Wilbur drops Tommy’s hand and steps forward to look at the boy. He is standing so close Tommy can practically smell his snack of crisps on him. 

Wilbur is mumbling something. In a low voice. Over and over, he is saying: please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Finally, he stops and looks at the blond’s broken face. “Please, Tommy,” he implores. “Don’t make me write a song.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Wilbur did write a song, what do you think some of the lyrics would be? The title? I'm not sure if I want the movie ending or the book ending quite yet, leaning towards book though, but I'd love to hear your input. As always, come hang out and get fic-recs for what to read while I'm hiatus-ing as well as pings for chapters as soon as they're posted. I'm also going to be asking for ideas on my next chapter, a friend POV, later on when I start that so if you want to be involved in my writing process go say hi over there.

**Author's Note:**

> Join our [discord](https://discord.gg/qj7xfh6p6G) to get updates and to hang out and vibe with other fans!


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